


Into the Sunrise

by sarpenur



Category: Books of the Raksura - Martha Wells
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-11 23:08:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 52,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28875456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarpenur/pseuds/sarpenur
Summary: Alternate ending to The Cloud Roads. After Jade and Moon bring back the Fell poison and attack the Fell at the colony, a kethel manages to fly away with some of the Arbora, and Moon pursues. But Ranea has settled her flight at a destroyed groundling city, and Jade doesn't get there in time.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21





	Into the Sunrise

Chapter 1

“Back here!” Bone called from the back of the hall.

Moon ran down the passage after the others. That he and Jade had managed to find the Fell poison, and that the Fell had been stupid enough to fall for the trick, even eating the poisoned kethel, seemed a small miracle. But still, none of it mattered if they couldn’t find the rest of the Indigo Cloud Raksura. If the Fell had eaten them all, or already moved them somewhere else, it would all be for nothing. At least there were still several layers of the colony yet to search.

Moon passed through a stone archway, into a room filled with the sacs that the Fell usually carried dakti in.

“Are these all dakti?” someone asked. “How big is this flight?”

“Wait!” said Chime. He was covered in Fell blood. They all were, after fighting the Fell through the halls and passages. Chime stepped forward and pressed a hand against the translucent side of the sac. The pale material bent inward. Suddenly, a face appeared – but the auburn hair and copper skin were nothing like that of a dakti. “Arbora!” Chime exclaimed.

Moon stepped in front of him, carefully extending his claws and ripping down the length of the sack. Six Arbora tumbled out onto the ground. Moon caught the first one, but the others collapsed limply against the stone floor.

Startled exclamations to his right drew his attention, and Moon turned. Bone had already opened a sac of his own, and was checking on the warriors that he had found.

Chime knelt beside the others from Moon’s sac. “They’re alright!” he called out. “Just unconscious.”

Mutters of relief filtered back through the others as they realized that not all the Raksura left in the colony were dead. Some still were, though. Moon blinked, Petal’s dead face swimming in his vision.

The others were already opening the other sacs.

“Check to make sure it’s not dakti first!” Moon called out to them. They seemed too excited to listen, though. But who could blame them? After all, these were the members of their colony, who they had all known for turns and turns. It was Moon who was the outsider here.

“The clutches!” someone cried from further back. “The clutches are here!”

Moon made his way back through one of the passages on the side. Someone had to keep an eye out, after all, and it might as well be him. Jade would watch the passages inside to keep anyone from dropping down on them from above, but some of the side passages off of the halls in this area led directly to the outside, and anything could come through there. There was a platform on the outside of this wall, somewhere around this level, Moon recalled. He could find it and keep an eye out, ready to go back in and alert Jade if he spotted anything trying to get in.

The passage he was following suddenly opened out into the daylight. Moon blinked, just as something moved in his peripheral vision to his right. He whirled, ducking into a crouch to be ready to attack, just as a dakti’s claw swiped past where his head had been.

Behind the dakti, three kethel clutched more of the sacs, though from this angle Moon couldn’t see whether what was inside was Fell or Raksura. Dakti clung to the scales of their chests and back, as if they had been just about to take off before Moon stumbled upon them.

“Fell! Over here!” he cried, hoping the warriors back in the bowers could hear him.

How had so many of them escaped being poisoned? Or maybe that was the wrong way to think of it. This flight was so big, it was lucky they had managed to take out as many with the poison as they did. If they had fought directly against a flight of this size, even if the whole colony had been together and able to shift, Moon wasn’t sure they would have stood a chance.

The dakti leapt for him, and he slipped through the side, whipping his claws out as it passed by him and slicing its throat. It collapsed behind him, but already, dakti were climbing off the nearest kethel, ready to attack.

Only him against three kethel and who-knew-how-many dakti wasn’t a fight Moon thought he could win. Normally, he would just let them run and Pearl and Jade could chase them down if they wanted to. But if Arbora or warriors were in those sacs, he couldn’t just let them leave.

Just then, a cloud passed away from in front of the sun, letting forth a sharper ray of sunlight. The bright beam struck against black Fell scales so that they shone, where they weren’t stained with blood. The light made the normally translucent sac of the nearest kethel clear for an instant, and Moon could make out the terrified faces of trapped Arbora inside. Then another obscuring cloud blocked the sun again. But now, Moon knew he couldn’t let the kethel leave. Hopefully Jade or Pearl would get here quickly.

The kethel closest to the edge of the platform crouched as if preparing to take flight, and Moon leapt toward it, knocking startled dakti out of his way with his wings. They scratched at his scales, but he ignored them, and when one got a good grip on his leg, he simply kicked it off.

The kethel turned from where it had been about to leap. Normally, Moon wouldn’t stand a chance against a kethel, but this one was burdened with the sac it was carrying. Moon struck for its throat.

It raised its free hand, and swatted him out of the air, its claws heavy as they hit the side of his head. As he began to spin toward the ground though, he struck out blindly with his claws, and felt them tear through something soft.

He hit the ground hard, his head spinning from the blow. Immediately, a dakti was on top of him. He threw it off and scrambled to the edge of the platform. He glanced back toward the kethel, and saw with some satisfaction that he had managed to rip open the sac it had been holding, spilling out the Arbora inside. Only half were conscious, and even those seemed dazed and weak, but it would still make it hard for the Fell to take them now, which was what Moon had intended.

One down, two to go. He turned toward the other kethel.

But before he could move, a streak of black slammed down out of the air in front of him. It was a ruler. Its shifted form was slightly larger than Moon’s, but its black crest wasn’t as prominent as those of some rulers he had met. Perhaps this one was younger.

It glanced toward the kethel Moon had attacked, then at the startled Arbora huddling on the platform. Its expression was hard to read since it didn’t have any spines, but Moon thought it seemed annoyed.

When it turned back to take a closer look at Moon, though, its demeanor changed. It’s face still appeared blank, but something about its posture suggested to Moon that it was pleased.

“Consort,” it hissed, quietly, as if to itself. “Just what we were missing. She will be pleased.”

Moon resisted the urge to take a step back, since he was already standing at the edge of the platform.

Moon, though even more outnumbered now, braced himself to attack. But suddenly, two large blurs, blue and gold, came hurtling out of a passage on the level above.

The ruler hissed and leapt backwards closer to the kethel.

He didn’t give any orders that Moon could see, but as soon as Pearl landed, the kethel with the broken sac shook the few remaining dakti off of itself and leapt at Pearl. She flared her wings and snarled, but the greater weight of the kethel and the momentum of its charge sent them both tumbling off over the edge of the platform.

The remaining dakti on the platform converged on Jade and Moon, and he stepped forward to guard her left side. The ruler lashed its tail in frustration.

Throwing a dakti over the edge of the platform, Jade suddenly leapt for the ruler, slashing at his face. As he ducked to the side though, rather than pursue after him, she barreled past him, aiming for one of the two remaining kethel.

The ruler hissed at being tricked – then without warning crouched and took off into the air, at the same time as the other kethel.

Jade growled in frustration, claws burrowed into the scales of the other kethel’s head as it tried to buck her off without dropping the sack.

She turned her head and her eyes met his. “Moon, don’t –” Her words were cut off as the kethel reached up to grab her, and she had to drop lower down its back.

But Moon understood perfectly what she was trying to say. _Don’t let them get away._ Jade didn’t have to worry; he would do whatever it took to get the rest of her colony back. That’s why they had let him stay with them all this time, after all, since he had promised to defend them from the Fell.

Ripping the wing off a dakti attacking him and pushing it over the edge, he leapt after it. While it continued to fall, Moon flapped his wings and caught the air, rising up after the fleeing Fell.

When he caught up to the kethel, it noticed him immediately and swiped at him, but he pulled in his wings and rolled out of its grasp. Then he snapped them open again, and with a quick flap came up around it over its back, sinking his claws into its scales. Ripping open the sac at this height would only cause the Arbora inside to fall to their deaths. His only chance was to injure it enough to force it to land, then wait for Jade and Pearl to come and finish it off. On kethel, there was normally a place near the head with thinner scales where attacking would do the most damage, and he started to look for such a spot.

But before he could even tear off a single scale, a rush of air came from behind him. He tried to turn, but a black-scaled arm snapped out, catching him around the neck and pressing into his windpipe. He tried to push the ruler off with his wings, but instead it hitched the claws on one of its feet into his left wing, dragging it down at a painful angle.

If he let go of the kethel, they would both fall. But without his hands, he couldn’t fight back.

He let go anyways, and the force of the air drove them back over the kethel’s tail. They plunged down through the air for a moment, before Moon felt the jerk as the ruler snapped his wings out, flapping to keep them aloft.

Moon reached back to scratch at the ruler’s face, but it ignored his efforts, even when he drew blood. The forest below seemed to have black patches in it, as if parts had simply disappeared. Moon realized a second later that the darkness wasn’t in the forest itself, but in his vision.

He twisted, trying to get an angle at which he could reach the ruler with his disemboweling claws, but his limbs felt so weak he could barely move.

“Moon!” He thought he heard someone calling him, as if from a distance, but it was hard to tell with all the rushing in his ears. Could they really be flying fast enough for the wind to be so loud?

His head pounded. The darkness covered almost everything now. His claws scrabbled more and more weakly at the scaled arm. The pain in his chest from lack of breath was unbearable.

Then the darkness covered everything, and he felt himself shift just as he lost consciousness.

When Moon woke up, his head was pounding. He could smell Fell-scent, alongside a strange metallic smell – and frightened Raksura. He tried to shift, but nothing happened. What?

He opened his eyes and pushed himself up, feeling a wave of nausea. After it passed, he looked around. The room was dim and square, and the walls were lined with empty shelves, like a storage room in a groundling settlement.

How had he come here? They had poisoned the Fell at the colony and then – he remembered finding the escaping kethel, and struggling in the air with the ruler, its arm around his throat. No wonder his head hurt so much.

The fact that he couldn’t shift meant there must be another mentor-dakti here. And the fact that he was here at all meant Jade and Pearl hadn’t caught up to the ruler and the third kethel. Were they alright? Had they managed to kill the other two kethel? And what about the Arbora in the third sac?

“Moon?”

He spun around, getting halfway to his feet. The movement made his head spin.

Six Arbora clustered by the wall at the other side of the room. These must be the ones who had been in the third sac. He didn’t recognize any of them in particular, but if they knew him, they must be from Indigo Cloud. He lowered himself back into a sitting position. At least they weren’t dead yet. Though being caught by the Fell wasn’t much better.

A faint shaft of light coming from a narrow opening in the wall they were clustered around illuminated them slightly. Their clothes were stained and torn. The stench of Fell clung to all of them – and to Moon, too. Moon counted four males and two females, all young. The one who had spoken had dark curly hair and honey skin. Now he looked closer, Moon thought he had seen her before in the teachers bowers, but dark as it was, and dirty and bedraggled as they all were, it was hard to tell.

“You are –,” he started to ask, but ended up in a coughing fit before he could finish the question. When it subsided, he looked back at them expectantly.

“I’m Heart,” she said. “These are Gift, Needle, Dream, Snap, and Merit. Merit and I are mentors, and the rest are teachers.”

Moon swallowed, though his mouth was dry, and ended up coughing again.

“You’re the solitary consort Stone brought back,” said the one Heart had introduced as Snap. “What are you doing here?”

When Moon didn’t speak, Heart offered, “They brought us here in a sac. When we got here, they put us in this room.”

“I know,” said Moon. His voice was rough. “They had –,” he coughed, “they had most of the Arbora and warriors in sacs. We managed to retake colony and get most of them back, but a ruler and three kethel tried to fly away with three of the sacs. Jade and Pearl took on two of the kethel, but I didn’t manage to stop the third. There was a ruler that stopped me.” Surely, Jade and Pearl had managed the kill the other two kethel, right? Otherwise, wouldn’t there be more Arbora here right now? Unless they were keeping the rest in another room. Moon clenched his eyes shut. No, the queens couldn’t have been caught or killed! They were stronger than him, and the ruler had left with the third kethel.

Heart must have misread his expression, because she offered tentatively, “It’s okay. We wouldn’t expect a consort to defeat a kethel and a ruler.”

So he would have lost no matter what he had done? Moon wasn’t very much cheered by this thought. “Where are we?” he asked, to change the subject. “Did you see anything when they brought you here? I was unconscious so I didn’t see.”

“We saw a little,” Merit supplied. “This place seems to be some kind of groundling city, surrounded by forest. It’s built along a river, with small branching streams that we think the groundlings made stretching out all through the city, like roads except with water in them. We think it must have been taken by the Fell recently, because there are still all these little abandoned groundling craft sitting in the water.”

Huh. Moon had never heard of a city like that. But then, though he had traveled further than any of the Arbora here, he had still only seen a small portion of the three worlds. “Did you see what kind of groundling structure we’re in?”

“We saw it,” Heart said, frowning, “but we’re not sure what it’s supposed to be for. It’s dark, like its made out of metal, and box shaped, except for these giant shafts which come out of the roof.”

“I still think it’s a palace,” Gift said.

Snap scowled at her.

“Stone says most big groundling buildings he has seen were palaces!” she protested. Heart just sighed. Apparently they had already had this argument.

Moon had never heard of any large grounding structures that looked like Heart’s description, palaces or otherwise. Those sorts of shafts were normally used for ventilation in forges, but from what the others said, this building was too big to be any sort of forge Moon had heard of.

“Have you tried to shift?” he asked, not wanting to let them get mired in pointless arguing.

Heart nodded resignedly. “None of us have been able to. How did the queens manage to take back the colony, when they couldn’t shift? Or could they?”

Moon glanced toward the door pointedly. “They had ways.” Though he didn’t sense anything directly on the other side of the door, there was still a risk of the Fell overhearing anything they said.

Heart frowned, but didn’t pursue the question, instead drawing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around her legs.

Moon watched them for a moment. They were all beautiful, just out of adolescence, young and healthy. And two of them were mentors. The Fell had picked them for breeding stock, he realized unhappily. They were going to try to make more crossbreeds.

“Why are you looking at us like that?” Heart asked.

“No reason.”

He pushed himself to his feet, swaying for a moment. He put a hand against the wall to steady himself and made his way over to the door. The room wasn’t large, but now that he was moving around, he felt the thin draft of fresher air coming from the slit all the Arbora were clustered around. He slid his fingers along the cracks of the door, but the hinges were on the other side. A small amount of light seeped through between the cracks here and at the slit in the wall, but that was all.

“We’ve already tried pushing against it from this side, but it won’t budge,” Snap said.

“Are Pearl and Jade…” Heart asked, trailing off with a glance toward the door.

Moon considered what to say for a moment, but in the end decided to be honest. He really didn’t know any more than the Fell would, anyways. “They were fighting two kethel when I left, but I think they’re strong enough they’ll be fine. I didn’t see what happened because I lost consciousness when the ruler choked me.”

“Oh,” said Heart simply.

“They’ll surely come and save us, then!” said Needle, perking up.

Heart and Merit shot him be-quiet glares.

“That’s only if we don’t get eaten first,” Gift said quietly.

“Why would they bother dragging us all the way here just for that, though?” Snap asked sourly, rubbing the metal floor with a toe. “Don’t they have plenty of groundlings to eat already?”

Moon frowned. He was starting to see why Pearl hadn’t wanted to tell the colony about what the Fell really wanted. These Arbora were already afraid, no need to make it worse. Though he supposed if he didn’t say anything they would just keep assuming they were going to be eaten. Moon couldn’t tell if that was better or worse than knowing the truth. At least the Fell hadn’t done anything to them yet, if they still didn’t know why they had been brought here.

He looked away to find Heart watching him. She must have read something in his expression, because she asked, “You know something, don’t you?”

Now all the others were staring as well. Snap’s glower in particular was downright suspicious.

Well, if they didn’t manage to escape, they were going to find out soon enough anyways. Better to tell them the truth and not leave them in the dark. “Back at the colony, before the Fell attacked, they had sent a ruler to Pearl, to offer her…to tell her that they wanted their court to… join with hers.”

“Join?” Snap’s brow wrinkled in confusion.

Heart’s eyes, though, widened slightly in dawning comprehension.

“We know they have at least one crossbreed already,” Moon continued, “a mentor-dakti at the colony that was keeping everyone from shifting. We killed it, but there must be one here as well that’s stopping us from shifting now.”

“But, that’s impossible!” Merit said. “We’re too different from them.”

But Heart shook her head slowly. “There were hints, in some of the older writings in the mentor library, that Raksura and Fell initially came from the same species. But I wasn’t sure whether I believed it.”

“But then, they must want…” Needle made a strangled little growl, coming to the inevitable conclusions.

Moon sighed and turned back to examining the room. The shelves were all metal, like the walls and floor, and seemed to be of one piece with the walls. There were a few lumps of metal or stone left on the lowest shelves, but no groundling tools, nothing like an axe or pick they could use to lever the door open. There were no other openings besides the door and the small crack – for ventilation? He had never seen a room like this in a groundling settlement before. And from what the Arbora had said, most of the building was built this way. The amount of metal they had used for it must be enormous. The lack of joins in the walls meant that even if he could have shifted, he wasn’t sure his claws would have been enough to break out.

Even still, there had to be some way for them to escape. He remembered his promise to Jade back in the blind, that if they didn’t succeed in retaking the colony, he would take the remaining warriors and Arbora to Wind Sun. He had promised to protect the rest of the court when Jade wasn’t around. And Jade wasn’t around right now. Somehow, he had to get these Arbora out, and get them back to Jade.

“Moon, do you think –,” Heart began, but the click of scales against metal from the other side of the door stopped her words.

There was a rattle like keys. Apparently, the Fell had figured out how to use groundling keys, which Moon had seen before, but rarely. Most groundling settlements Moon had lived in weren’t large enough or rich enough to have any metalwork that complex, and he hadn’t seen anything like that among the Raksura either. Considering that these groundlings seemed to be metal-workers though, that they used such locks wasn’t such a surprise.

Moon took a step back away from the door and took up a defensive crouch, while the Arbora huddled in the corner.

The door swung open to reveal a ruler standing there, partially blocking the light coming from some source beyond the angle of the door. His shifted form was tall, with a larger crest than the ruler Moon had fought earlier. Scars marred his black scales, and they were chipped in some places, the result of many battles.

His eyes locked immediately on Moon. His tail lashed, disturbing the shadows inside the room. “When Erasus said he couldn’t see you hiding with the others, I became concerned you had run and Lothas wouldn’t be able to bring you back. It seems my concern was unnecessary.”

Lothas must have been the ruler Moon had fought at the colony. Moon hissed back. “You should have been concerned. If he hadn’t had the kethel with him, I would have killed him like I killed –”

In a single bound, the ruler was in front of him, hitting him across the face and sending him spinning to the ground.

Heart growled at him, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw her leap at the ruler, and the others follow her. But with a swipe of his tail, the ruler slammed them back. His hand clamped down over Moon’s arm, his claws digging painfully into Moon’s groundling skin, and he hauled Moon out of the room and flung the door shut. A dakti with keys scuttled up to the lock, as the ruler dragged Moon down the hall.

Moon struggled, but in groundling form against a ruler in shifted form, he didn’t have much of a chance. The light, he noticed, was coming from strange wire-mesh contraptions hung at intervals along the metal hall. Occasionally they passed dakti that shrank back into the shadows of doorways, but mostly the halls were empty, stinking of hot metal and dead groundling. Maybe this building really was a giant forge. They passed a couple of open doors to rooms that looked like smaller internal forges, with openings along curving walls that Moon assumed were the giant shafts the Arbora had seen from the outside.

Eventually they came to a doorway guarded by a kethel. The hallway beyond was the first Moon had seen that wasn’t metal. The walls were paneled with greyish wood, and the floor was a flecked, tan-brown clay. Apparently the groundlings hadn’t had enough metal to make the entire building out of it. They passed rooms filled with clay casks, many of which were tipped over, spilling a black, powdery substance across the floor. Moon recognized it from his brief time around groundling forges as a sort of fuel to make the fire hotter and burn longer. The Fell must have hoped the casks contained something more valuable so broke them open in their search. Or maybe they just needed to destroy a few things, before the place felt like home.

After passing through the doorway to the wood-and-clay section, they began to ascend, up stairs and slanted passages. They passed a few more of the forges, but not as many.

When they finally passed a window, Moon got a brief glimpse of the outside. They were high up, so Moon could see out across the city, though the sun was setting, so that the houses and buildings cast long shadows across their surroundings. There was a river running through the center, that seemed to run directly up to the giant forge, perhaps passing underneath though Moon couldn’t be sure from this angle. Dark roads seemed to extend outward from it – but as the last sunrays struck the surface, he saw that it was rippling, water rather than roads. Strange tan craft bobbed in the side-channels, though none were in the central river. It must be moving too fast, so that any that were left there had long since gotten swept away.

He tried to pull away from the ruler’s grasp to get a closer look, but the ruler just growled under its breath and hit him in the head so hard his vision swam, dragging him up the steps, and the city passed out of his sight.

When they reached the very top, the halls turned mostly to metal again, and the ruler stopped abruptly in a long corridor. He slammed Moon into the wall, and pressed himself against him. The scales on his chest felt cold against Moon’s back even through his shirt. The ruler was breathing hard, as if he had just been fighting or running, but Moon knew he hadn’t put up enough of a fight, despite his efforts, to actually wind him to that extent.

Moon tensed. Was that why the ruler had brought him up here? To rape him?

But the ruler just stood still for a moment, then breathed into his ear, “Don’t disappoint her.”

Moon only had a moment to be confused, before it grabbed him by the back of his shirt and shoved him through a dark opening in the metal walls.

He tumbled down a brief set of stairs, and landed hard on the metal ground. The room beyond was dim, but wide, a few openings high in the wall on the opposite side letting in light. One of the giant shafts passed up through the center, its sides a smooth curve.

Behind him, at the top of the stairs, he heard the clack of the ruler’s claws as it shifted position. He couldn’t go back that way. Why had it brought him here, though?

Quietly, he got to his feet, and stepped forward across the room. As he got further in, he saw that the room extended around the cylindrical shaft. He crept close to the side, trying to see what lay around the other end before it saw him.

As he rounded the curved wall, suddenly, a black figure came into sight, laying on the ground. It was big. At first Moon couldn’t tell what it was, but then, he noticed a slight movement. It was breathing. He leapt back, for once glad of not having claws in groundling form to clatter against the hard floor. The image in his mind resolved itself into wings, scales, a tail. Though he had never seen one before, he was sure this must be a Fell progenitor. More slowly, he began to back towards the door. He had no desire to go back towards the ruler, but even less to stay anywhere near _this_.

A hand brushed the back of his neck.

He leapt about three feet in the air, pushing off the wall to the other side of the ring-shaped room, and coming to a crouch with his back to the other wall.

Behind where he had just been standing was a woman. She could have passed for a groundling, or the groundling form of an Aeriat. She was taller than Moon, and slim, with gold-tinted skin and blue eyes, and straight, black hair falling past her waist. A light wrap covered her shoulders and waist, leaving her arms bare. Except, he hadn’t heard her or felt her approach at all. This was no groundling.

She took a step towards Moon. “Don’t be scared. I won’t hurt you.” Her voice sounded like a groundling’s too, light and warm. But despite her appearance and words, something about her seemed somehow _off_.

A sudden gust of wind coming in through the openings near the ceiling blew her scent over to Moon, and he shuddered involuntarily. Her scent was foul, strange, wrong. Not even in the way of Fell, but worse. She had to be another cross-breed, like the mentor-dakti. A ruler-warrior, maybe?

“I am Ranea.”

Moon tensed warily, not saying anything. He tried to shift, but the mentor-dakti’s powers must extend even here, since he only felt the pressuring sensation of being stopped.

She didn’t seem angry or surprised by his silence. “I already know who you are, Moon. I’ve know for a long time, ever since Liheas told me about you.”

Moon flinched at the name, and she smiled.

“He was so pleased to have found you, a consort who knew nothing of Raksura, who we could make into one of our own. He was going to bring you to me – but you betrayed him.”

Moon wasn’t sure why she was talking to him like this. Simply to scare him? At least they were out of sight of the progenitor. His only fear was that the sound of their voices would awaken it, but Ranea was speaking softly enough her voice couldn’t be traveling far. _Keep her talking_ , Moon thought to himself. He wasn’t sure what he was trying to buy time _for_ , but he would get to that later.

Moon licked his lips. “Liheas lied to me. He told me I was Fell.”

“He didn’t lie. You really could have been Fell, if you had come to me.”

Moon didn’t bother to argue the accuracy of that statement. Fell never admitted to lies, and apparently that extended to lies other Fell had told as well.

“Why,” he asked, not sure if he wanted to know the answer but finding himself curious in a morbid way, “did your flight want to…combine with Raksura? Your kind seem to be able to destroy groundling cities just fine already, even without crossbreed abilities.” His voice sounded bitter and angry in his own ears.

The crossbreed woman’s eyes were unreadable. “My progenitor was the one who started it. She used to tell me, when I was young, of how her flight had once ruled in the east. But over time, there was fighting between the rulers, and the flight split and split again, until it became small and sickly. Fewer rulers were born, fewer progenitors. Then, she remembered a prey to the west, another species of shifters, so close to being like us. Their consorts were like our rulers, their queens like our progenitors. She thought of taking from them what we were missing, joining with them.” Her gaze turned thoughtful. “Aeriat and Fell came from the same source, you know. Only, the Aeriat joined with the Arbora. It made them weak. Joining with the Fell will make us both stronger. We have created a better species.”

“You’re abominations,” said Moon. “You create nothing, only destroy.”

Ranea bared her teeth half-reflexively at the accusation, but otherwise seemed unbothered by it. “Why shouldn’t we destroy, when we are the strongest? By combining with the Raksura, we will become the most powerful flight in the three worlds.”

Moon suppressed a shudder. He had to do something, stop this mad flight somehow. But he didn’t know what yet. Since she seemed to be in a talkative mood, he decided to try asking something else. At the very least, it would keep her occupied. And while she was talking, he wouldn’t have to face whatever came next. The ruler had surely brought him here for a reason, but whatever it was, he very much did not want to find out.

“But, there are Raksura further to the east than Indigo Cloud, closer to where you were.” Stone had told him as much. “Indigo Cloud might be a small court, but it’s still far from weak. Why pick them to prey on?”

For the first time, Ranea looked legitimately half-amused. “For you, of course, Moon. We knew you would be there. Erasus scried it. We followed you.”

Moon felt a pit in his stomach. “You’re lying. You could have found me any time in all the past turns when I was alone.”

“I wasn’t ready to clutch yet.”

“Clutch?” Moon felt his heart skip a beat. Surely, she couldn’t be –

Ranea smiled. “You thought I was part warrior? I’m part queen, part progenitor.”

She started to walk forward, crossing the floor toward him. He backed away, but his shoulders hit the wall immediately. He still couldn’t shift. Was it really the mentor-dakti stopping him now? Or was it Ranea herself, if she was part queen, as she claimed? She stopped only a single pace in front of him. Now that she was closer, her expression looked just as wrong as her scent, disjointed, like a piece of clothing made for a groundling species with very different physical characteristics, that didn’t quite manage to fit the one wearing it. She reached out a hand and grasped Moon’s neck lightly, two of her fingers against the back of his neck and her thumb pressing into the hollow of his throat. Moon swallowed, but something about the look in her eyes stopped him from flinching away, as if telling him it would be pointless to even try.

A scratch on the floor behind her caused her to turn her head, and Moon was relieved to be released from the gaze of those blue eyes.

“Janeas. Go away.” Her voice now was cold, hard.

The ruler that had brought Moon here stood several paces away. As the woman stared at him, he shifted to groundling, long black hair surrounding a pale, scarred face.

“My queen, I have brought him, as you can see. There was no need to punish Lothas.”

Ranea hissed, the sound low and menacing. “He didn’t bring all we had planned. Only six Arbora, and no queen.”

Janeas shrugged uncomfortably. “A queen would have been difficult to keep under control anyways. And he brought you a consort, didn’t he?”

Her eyes cut back to Moon, and he shuddered involuntarily.

Suddenly, she threw back her head and laughed, the sound simultaneously like bells and broken glass. “Fine. Go get him. The injuries I gave him aren’t enough to kill him, anyways.”

Janeas’s expression was closed, but Moon felt like his eyes betrayed just a touch of relief. “Yes, my queen.” Quickly, he turned and shifted, disappearing around the edge of the shaft.

When Moon turned his head back, Ranea’s gaze was on him again. From this close, he noticed that there was a dullness to her hair and eyes, and her skin was too pale to be ever mistaken for a Raksura. He looked away.

Moon growled at her. “If you touch me, my queen will rip your wings off.” He tried to sound confident, but he was far from sure that Jade would really make good on his threat if given the chance. After all, what was he to her? He wasn’t even a real member of her court. He remembered what Pearl had said to him before, that Jade hadn’t put the scent marker on him that queens used to claim their consorts. Maybe she wouldn’t even care what Ranea did, unless it resulted in more crossbreeds.

Moon risked another glance up at Ranea’s face, to see how she reacted to his threat.

Ranea’s smile didn’t shift, though if that was due to her lack of fear, or the fact that her smile was a frozen mask in the first place, or both, Moon couldn’t say. She reached up her other hand and brushed the hair away from his face, pressing her fingers lightly against his cheek where Janeas had hit him. “Will she now?” Her tone was soft, mocking. “I would rip her throat out if she tried. But once I’m done with you, your queen won’t want you anymore anyways.”

Moon tried to stop himself from shaking, from pointlessly attempting to shift. He didn’t want her to think he was afraid, even though he was. He wracked his mind, but couldn’t think of anything he could do to get out of this. For one thing, he was trapped in groundling form, but he was probably weaker than her even in shifted form, and she knew it. And her words hurt as well. He had suspected Jade had never really wanted him in the first place. He was a solitary with no bloodline, and the only reason she had been interested in him was that he had been her only option. Did Ranea say what she did on purpose, knowing about his position in the court from Erasus’s spying on the colony? Or was her certainty about Jade’s response due to something else, some aspect of Raksuran culture he was unaware of?

Some of what he was thinking must have shown on his face despite himself, since Ranea leaned closer to him, her foul scent filling the air. “You don’t need to think about your queen anymore,” she said, her voice soft like silk, but somehow jarringly wrong, “Since you’re mine now.”

Moon couldn’t bear it any longer, her closeness, her scent, everything. He wrenched himself out of her grasp, making to run toward the opening he had come in. But before he had gone two steps, he felt something large in the air behind him.

He turned just in time to see the last of the black mist from her shifting resolve into Ranea’s shifted form, before she snatched him up in her clawed hand and pinned him against the wall again.

Unable to move, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from her. Her shape was something out of a nightmare. Her scales were the matte black of Fell, without the colors or undersheen of Raksura, and with a coarser texture. Her wings had the leathery hide of the dakti, and her head was crowned with both an armored crest and Raksuran spines. And she was big, half again as tall as Moon’s shifted form.

Moon had to do something, say something. His heart pounded in his chest with adrenaline and fear. “Your progenitor is right there. Won’t she be displeased with you?”

Ranea only laughed. As she grinned, her jaw distended to show a startling array of teeth. “She is old, and sick. The flight is mine, now.” She leaned even closer, dropping her head. He felt her teeth prick against the skin of his neck.

He couldn’t let her make more crossbreeds like this, use them to kill more groundlings and Raksura. He had to say something that would make her kill him. “Crossbreeds will never be able to take over the three worlds. Real Raksura and Fell will recognize you for the abominations you are, and kill you long before then.”

Ranea growled, low and threatening, her hands pressing him so hard her claws dug into his skin. “You are wrong, little consort.” She pulled back her head, her blue eyes meeting his. “My flight will follow me to the ends of the world.”

“Because you make them.” He knew how rulers worked somewhat, controlling the dakti and kethel by seeing through their eyes. He imagined Ranea’s powers probably worked the same way.

“Yes. But they like it.”

Moon started to growl, but it turned into a yelp as Ranea jerked him off the wall onto the floor. She shoved her knee between his thighs, the way Jade did. Jade. He wished she were here so badly. He had no idea whether she would be able to win against the monstrosity that was Ranea, but all he could think was that he wanted her to save him. If only she would come. But he knew it was a useless thought. She wouldn’t appear just because he wished it. How many times in the past had he wished to be saved? But no savior could ever be called just by wishing.

Ranea pressed closer to him, her hands moving up along his body, her scales rough along his more-sensitive groundling skin. This close, her scent was overpowering, making him want to gag.

This can’t be happening, Moon thought. No, no, no! Her presence above him was overwhelming, suffocating, her half-spread wings blocking his view of the rest of the room. He had to make her stop – had to do something. He struggled, pulling his hands free to jab at her eyes, but she caught him easily in her claws, pressing his wrists back against the cold metal of the floor. He tried to shift again, but it was useless, the pressure was still there, whether from the mentor-dakti or Ranea herself.

Her blue eyes seemed to laugh, enjoying his terror and his struggling. He clenched his teeth on a whimper. As she stared down at him, her tongue flicked out over her pointed teeth. “Struggle all you like, little consort. You are mine.”

When Ranea was finished with him, he huddled in a ball against the wall as she paced back and forth, her tail lashing behind her. She only stopped when another ruler in shifted form entered the room, this one a younger one that Moon hadn’t seen before.

“Venras. Take him back to the others.” She flicked a claw at him, and without waiting for a response, in a single leap passed out of sight beyond the curve of the room.

Venras turned to look at Moon. “Come, consort.”

Moon didn’t move.

The ruler’s tail lashed in agitation, and he walked over to Moon, reaching out a hand to grab his arm.

Without consciously intending to, Moon flinched away. But the ruler just hissed in annoyance, and with a quick grab wrapped his claws around Moon’s upper arm, dragging him to his feet. He staggered, but the ruler held him upright.

Without speaking, he dragged him out of the room. Moon barely even bothered to struggle.

Moon had difficulty paying as much attention to the building this time, but he thought Venras was taking him back by a different route than they had come in. He didn’t want to think or feel, and mostly just let himself be dragged along.

The one time he did pay attention was when they passed a half-metal half-clay hallway, along which he scented Raksura. But when he tried to look back, Venras just jerked him forward again. Maybe Ranea had been attacking other colonies further to the east after all, or maybe she still had hostages from Sky Copper. Or else they could be further hostages from Indigo Cloud, brought back before Jade and Pearl retook the colony. Or else, Jade or Pearl could have lost their battles against the rulers. But Moon didn’t want to think about that.

At last they came to the metal hallway where Moon had awoken. He could faintly smell the familiar scent of the Indigo Cloud Arbora from behind the door. Venras had caught a dakti in the hallway and made it unlock the door. He roughly shoved Moon in, and swung shut the door.

“Moon?” a startled voice said.

Moon squinted as his eyes adjusted to the darkness of the space, until he made out the forms of Heart, Merit, Gift, Needle, Dream, and Snap, still huddling around the crack in the wall.

Heart, who had spoken, stood and took a step forward. “Moon, are you alright? We were worried about you.” She stepped closer, until she was within a pace of him, and reached up a hand to his face.

He flinched back, his shoulder bumping the wall beside the door. He found that his hands were shaking, and he didn’t want to look her in the eyes. Didn’t want to look any of them in the eyes.

He went to the opposite side of the room and sat down with his back to the wall, drawing his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. He rested his forehead against his knees and closed his eyes.

The whole place smelled like Fell. Even the Raksura smelled like Fell from being carried here in the dakti sac. But right now, more than just Fell, he smelled like _crossbreed_. Like Ranea. There was no way the Arbora couldn’t smell it too, even in groundling form. He wanted to wash it off him so badly his skin itched, but there was no water here to wash with.

He felt a presence, one of the Arbora coming over to kneel in front of him. From her scent, it was Heart. “Moon?” she said tentatively. “Are you hurt? I’m a mentor. I don’t have any herbs or simples here, but I might still be able to help.”

It wouldn’t make sense for him to tell her to go away, when they were all trapped in the same tiny storage room. So instead, without raising his head, he said, “Leave me alone.” His voice grated.

He couldn’t see Heart’s expression. Was she angry? Disgusted? He found he didn’t care. Didn’t care about any of it, any of them, anymore. He just wanted it all to go away.

Eventually, he heard Heart get to her feet and retreat back to the others. _Good_.

For the next length of time, he didn’t know how long, he tried to think about nothing at all. He failed.

Chapter 2

He didn’t know how much time had passed when the cramps in his legs brought his attention back to himself. He curled his toes, trying to make them pain go away.

The Arbora were talking in low voices among themselves on the other side of the room, perhaps had been for some time. He strained his ears to listen.

“But how do we know we’ll be able to find a shaft before they catch us again?” Gift was saying. “This groundling palace is too big.”

“Did any of you see where one was when we came in?” Dream suggested.

Tense silence followed her words.

“I wasn’t even thinking about it,” muttered Snap bitterly. “How was I supposed to know to look for shafts?”

“It’s not your fault, none of us knew,” Merit comforted him.

“ _He_ might know,” suggested Needle tentatively.

“Does anyone want to go over there and ask him, then?” Snap bit off in a tone of annoyance.

There was a brief silence.

“We can ask him later, when we tell him the plan,” said Heart finally. “If he doesn’t know, we’ll just have to risk it anyways.” Her voice sounded determined on the surface, but underneath, Moon could still hear the fear, as if she were trying to talk herself into believing her own words. “When we saw the building from above, there were lots, and they were very big and hard to miss. It’s a risk, but I think it’s still worth trying.”

“Are you sure we’ll be able to climb out, though?” asked Gift doubtfully. “What if they’re smooth inside?”

“Why would they be smooth?” countered Snap. “The groundlings couldn’t have used them to get up and down if there weren’t handholds or stairs or something.”

“But what if they could fly?” Gift suggested darkly.

“Then they wouldn’t be groundlings anymore,” Merit protested.

“And once we get out,” Gift continued, her voice rising even as she tried to suppress it, “How do we know we won’t just get caught by the kethel again?”

“Because we’ll hide in the buildings,” Needle said. “There were lots of groundling buildings. They won’t be able to find us. And then when we reach the forest, we’ll be able to hide and wait for the queens to come get us. Even though none of us are hunters, we can still cover our tracks good enough to fool _Fell_.”

“But there’s that area of fields between the forest and the buildings,” Gift muttered.

“We’ll manage it somehow,” Heart said. “If we have to…” her voice faltered. “If we have to, we can split up and run for the edge of the woods.”

“Split up?” asked Merit. “How would that help?”

Snap hissed, but explained. “If only a few Fell have caught up to us, they won’t be able to pursue us all.”

“But whoever they do pursue will get caught again!” Merit protested.

The rest of the Arbora went quiet.

“Oh,” said Merit finally. “I don’t think that I like this plan.”

“Well, it’s the only one we’ve got,” said Snap sourly.

“Now,” said Heart, as if wanting to move on before their resolve could weaken again, “we just have to wait until the Fell come again. Then, we do as we’ve planned, alright?”

“Do you think they’ll come for one of us next time?” Dream asked quietly. “Or…him, again?”

“Maybe they’ll come to give us food,” suggested Merit. “I’m so hungry. They didn’t bring us all this way just to let us starve, did they?”

“But what if they try to feed us dead groundling?” asked Gift darkly.

“They wouldn’t –”

Moon stopped listening as the Arbora bickered. Their plan was never going to succeed. First of all, if it was a ruler that came to take one of them from the storage room like last time, their plan would fail immediately. Without their shifted forms, all of them together wouldn’t be able to take even a single ruler on. And Moon didn’t think the Fell would be so careless to send mere dakti. They knew the Raksura.

And apart from that, even if they did manage to overpower their captors, reaching the shafts wasn’t going to work. The Arbora seemed to be assuming the shafts were for transport. But from what he had seen of the building and his knowledge of groundlings, Moon thought it unlikely that was their purpose. They were most likely for ventilation for the smoke from the forges. While there _might_ be handholds in the walls for groundlings to go up and down them to clean them, it was by no means guaranteed. And apart from that, even if there were handholds, there were surely gratings near the top, probably too fine to be seen from the air, to prevent birds or other flying creatures from going down the shafts into the building. And preventing climbing Arbora from getting out. Their plan simply wouldn’t work.

Wasn’t it better for them to hope, though? Rather than despairing, like he was doing?

He stopped at the thought. He _had_ despaired. He lifted his head to look at the Arbora. Heart, Merit, Gift, Needle, Dream, even Snap, were the Indigo Cloud Arbora he had promised Jade he would protect. But instead, here he was, moping in the corner.

Why was he being like this? It wasn’t like he had never been taken by a Fell before. He should be better than this, stronger than this. _He_ should be the one coming up with a plan to escape from here. He thought of Heart or Dream, going through what he just had. It was one thing for him. He had been doing what was necessary to live with groundlings all his life. But the Arbora were sheltered. What was merely upsetting to him would be shattering to them. He couldn’t let them go through that. He had to get them out. There would always be time to mope and be miserable later. He had to do this. If not for the Arbora, at least for Jade. After all, even if she no longer wanted him now, she had taken him in when no other court would have, when she thought he was a solitary. He owed this to her, one last favor to pay her back for the time they had spent together.

“Your plan isn’t going to work.” His voice wasn’t loud, but all the Arbora immediately stopped arguing and looked at him, in varying expressions of surprise.

“Moon,” said Heart after a moment. “You’re…talking again? We didn’t know…”

He didn’t have time for this. “Those vents aren’t for getting in and out,” he interrupted her. “They’re for venting the smoke from the forges. This whole building is a giant groundling forge. There might or might not be handholds inside of them, but there’s almost certainly gratings over the top. You won’t be able to get out that way.”

“So what, then we’re stuck here for good?” Snap said bitterly.

“No.” Moon shook his head. “I didn’t say we couldn’t escape. Only that we couldn’t escape that way. I have a better plan.”

The Arbora looked at him doubtfully.

At least he had their attention, though. He didn’t think there were any dakti standing directly outside the door, but he still scooted closer and spoke softly. “When I was … earlier, I saw into some of the rooms in the forge building. The Fell have spilled a kind of burning powder the groundlings use all over the place. Even though a lot of the building is metal, if we can light the powder on fire, there are enough things here that burn that it will spread. If we set it on fire when one of us is taken out, then, when the Fell are distracted, we can come back and let out the others, and escape through the lower doorways. There will definitely be multiple entrances and exits in a building like a forge, where there’s a high risk of accidental fires.”

“And then we hide in the city?” Dream asked, sounding a bit hopeful.

Moon took her question as a good sign. “No, the kethel will find us too quickly. But there are still all those groundling boats out in the side streams. If we get to one and get it to work, we can take it into the central river, which will take us to the forest quicker than we could run, and quicker than all but kethel and rulers can fly. If the kethel are distracted by the fire, they might not see us until it’s too late.”

The Arbora were silent, considering. Even Snap and Gift seemed half convinced.

“But what if the kethel or the rulers do notice us?” Gift asked.

“Then we’ll deal with it,” Moon said shortly.

Snap scowled.

Moon growled at him. “It’s not like you’ve got a better plan.”

“I think it’s a good plan,” Heart said. “At least we have to try. But how will we set the burning powder on fire?”

This was going to be either very tricky, or very easy, depending on the answer to Moon’s next question.

“The powder begins to burn under high heat.” He looked at Heart. “You said earlier you might be able to heal an injury?” Heart eyes went wide, but he kept talking. “Was that just with your knowledge as a mentor, or can you still use your mentor powers?”

“Oh.” Heart looked relieved. “Yes, I can still use my mentor powers. What’s stopping us from shifting doesn’t seem to have affected that.”

Moon could have almost smiled. “Then, you can spell one of the smaller rocks left on the shelves in here to be very hot. Actually, it would be better if you spelled six of them, so we’ll all have one, no matter who the Fell take next.” Somehow, though, Moon knew it would be him again. It was better if it was Moon, anyways, since he trusted himself the most to carry out his own plan. But it wouldn’t hurt to have them all have a way to start the fire.

Now that there was a task to do, the Arbora stopped huddling by the crack and immediately busied themselves about it. They searched the shelves, looking for bits of metal that Heart and Merit could spell to make heat. They had to be small enough to wrap in ripped off bits of their clothing, for concealment, but also to not burn themselves. Raksura didn’t burn as easily as groundlings even in their groundling forms, but they still burned. Moon helped, making sure the rocks they chose were small enough and that they had some way to conceal them while remaining accessible. He had enough experience with groundlings to know how they concealed weapons, while the Arbora, if they wanted to hide something, generally just took it with them when they shifted, a method that right now was out of the question.

As they worked, the Arbora kept glancing at Moon out of the corners of their eyes when they thought he wasn’t looking, as if they expected at any moment he would go back to curling up in a ball in the corner saying nothing. It wasn’t that Moon didn’t want to do that – but escaping came first.

Soon enough, they all had tiny spelled warming-stones hidden in their clothes, and there was nothing left to do. The Arbora went back to huddling, and Moon went back to curling up in a ball against the opposite wall. If it was long enough before the Fell returned, they would have to have Heart spell all the stones again to keep them hot enough, but it would be at least half a day before that was necessary.

It was only a few hours later when footsteps in the hall told Moon someone was coming. The Arbora came up into tense crouches, their eyes wide. Whatever was in the hall sounded bigger than a dakti.

The door swung open. Moon recognized the distinctive crest of a ruler, but at first couldn’t tell which ruler it was, since the light coming in from behind it cast its features in shadow.

When it stepped inside and turned towards Moon, though, he saw that it was Venras. Was Janeas still looking after the other ruler Ranea had punished? Lothas, Moon recalled his name was. Moon almost felt sorry for him, thinking how they both had suffered at Ranea’s hands, until he remembered that Lothas was the ruler who had brought him here, at which point he felt a small surge of vicarious satisfaction.

Venras had crossed the small room to crouch in front of Moon. Any happiness Moon had felt at thinking of Lothas’s suffering died away as Venras put a clawed hand under his chin and lifted his head to look into his face.

“You’ll be quiet, won’t you?” he asked, his voice so low it was almost a whisper.

What was he on about now? Moon hissed at him in response.

Half-growling, Venras grasped the back of his head with the claws of his other hand, and dragged Moon out of the room by his hair.

Moon clenched his teeth on a whimper, instead striking out at Venras, but his blows bounced off the ruler’s scales harmlessly.

He had talked the Arbora into not attacking when the Fell next came to take one of them, like they had last time. If any of them got injured, it would just make it that much harder for them to run later when they had to. Moon’s resistance was only to keep up appearances. Even still, fighting alone made him feel oddly hollow.

In the hall, Venras switched his grip to Moon’s arm, the better to drag him along. Feeling less despairing than last time, now that there was a plan, Moon managed to resist more strongly. It mostly earned him bruises as Venras bounced him off the walls. But it would make the ruler less suspicious of what he was planning, Moon told himself.

This time, Venras lead them up instead of down. Openings into rooms filled with scattered belongings and spilled groundling forge-powder became more frequent. Moon glanced into some to see if there was anything else that would burn, and was surprised to find broken pieces of wooden furniture and straw ticks and clothes strewn about some of them. The groundlings that lived and worked here would never have carelessly left so many flammable things lying around like this. The Fell must have brought it all here later.

Moon wasn’t sure where the best place to start the fire would be. It couldn’t be too close to where the Raksura were being held, since that would risk the Fell discovering them while they were trying to escape. But if he waited too long, he might miss the best rooms with more powder in them.

When they were five or six floors up, Moon decided he had waited long enough. Seeing an open doorway ahead, he glanced into it as they passed just long enough to see that it was filled with spilled powder, before he jerked suddenly and violently out of Venras’s grip. The ruler’s claws left long, bloody scratches in his arm.

Venras growled, and turned, as Moon only half-pretended to trip, rolling across the floor into the room. With his free hand, he had already surreptitiously unwrapped the spelled warming-stone, and as he tumbled, he let it roll out of his hand into a clump of powder.

No sooner had he done so, then Venras landed in front of him with a thump, dragging him to his feet. “Still trying to escape? Give up, consort.”

With another bound, Venras took them out of the room again, going faster than before, his grip so hard Moon felt the bones of his arm grind together. At least Venras had left quickly enough that he wouldn’t have seen the powder starting to smoke.

They were three levels higher up, when Venras suddenly turned aside into an empty room. Moon was surprised, since they were still in the metal-half of the building. He realized that he had been so preoccupied with the plan that he had forgotten to wonder where Venras was taking him. Or maybe he just hadn’t wanted to think about it.

Venras hesitated in the doorway, glancing back and forth along the corridor, before stepping inside after Moon. Could it be, Venras wasn’t supposed to be here, doing this? If so, luck was really on Moon’s side today.

The feeling of being lucky quickly vanished though as Venras hauled him up and pressed him against the wall, running his clawed hand down Moon’s side, and leaning forward. Moon heard him breathe in his scent, which was still undoubtedly laced with Ranea’s. Suddenly, Moon understood. He could only hope that the fire spread quickly. It was worth it, he told himself. Either way, it was worth it.

Venras’s breathing had just started to become ragged, when suddenly, he froze. Moon turned his head to see the ruler’s face, and realized his eyes had become glassy and inward, as they did when the rulers were communicating with each other.

Suddenly, Venras growled in frustration and stepped away from Moon. He stalked across the floor, pacing back and forth once, his tail lashing in agitation. Then, without saying anything, he grabbed Moon’s arm and pulled him along behind him as he started back down the hall the way they had come.

Moon let his heart leap in hope. The fire had been discovered, and Venras had been called back to help deal with it, interrupting what he was trying to do here. Now, all Moon had to do was get away from him somehow, and get the other Raksura.

This had always been the most uncertain part of the plan, and was the main reason why he was glad he was doing this part himself, rather than trusting it to one of the Arbora. Stuck in groundling form, taking on a single ruler even with all of them hadn’t worked, and now he had to escape from one all by himself. But Moon had had an idea on the way up. Now, if only Venras took them back by the route they had come…

He did. They turned a corner, and Moon knew they were approaching an opening that led into one of the larger forges, placed directly beside one of the giant shafts. The forge’s contents were scattered haphazardly, and its metal boom, which let the groundlings get metal to the deepest parts of the enclosure, was twisted halfway out into the hall.

If it had been Janeas instead of Venras, it wouldn’t have worked. The older ruler would have been too cautious. But Venras was young, and distracted by thoughts of the fire and the need to hide his unapproved actions from the rest of his flight. As soon as Venras passed in front of of the boom, Moon jerked away sharply, earning him another set of gashes on his arm.

Venras, who hadn’t been paying much attention to Moon now that he was resisting less, hissed in annoyance but not any particular concern, and turned around. Or started to turn around, because before he finished, Moon braced himself against the wall and with all his strength shoved the boom forward. It gathered momentum as it swung and took the unsuspecting ruler hard in the head, flinging him into the opening in the giant shaft.

Well, so much for Venras. Moon thought the ruler might be able to shift before he hit the bottom, since Moon judged the force from the boom was only enough to stun him for a couple of seconds, but he wasn’t going to wait around to find out one way or another.

He leapt into motion, running along the hall and disappearing down the first stair he came across.

As he made his way down, he carefully avoided the place where he had set the fire, but he smelled smoke as he passed, and the reverberations of many running footsteps came from its direction. He tried to shift again, but still found it impossible. The mentor-dakti’s powers must extend over most of the forge-bulding. Passing another wrecked groundling room, he paused just long enough to pry out a three-pace-long metal bar. Its weight would slow him down slightly, but in groundling form without his claws, running into a Fell while unarmed could be fatal.

Once he passed below the level of the fire, Moon started to make his way back towards where he thought the Arbora were. For a panicked minute he thought his detour had gotten him lost, but then he recognized a stairway Venras had taken him up earlier, and he knew he was close.

He turned the corner to the hall without slowing, slamming into two unsuspecting dakti that were guarding the door. Without hesitation, he bashed the first over the head, cracking its skull, while he kicked the second into the wall. As the second struggled to its feet, he shoved it into the wall with the bar across its neck, putting his whole weight into it. The dakti’s flailing claws scraped his face, but he only pushed harder in response, until it shifted to groundling and went limp.

Wiping blood out of his eyes, he searched the dakti and quickly found the keys. He unlocked the door to the storage room and swung it open.

The Arbora were crouched on either side of the door, ready to attack whatever came in. “It’s me!” he hissed.

“Moon?” Heart said. “We heard fighting and we weren’t sure…” She peered at him. “You’re bleeding!” She reached up a hand to his face.

He jerked back. “There’s no time! We have to go. The fire won’t distract them forever.”

“Right,” said Heart, biting her lip.

“Why are you holding a metal bar?” Snap asked suspiciously.

“It’s a groundling weapon,” he hissed. “Since we can’t shift.”

“Why’s it crooked?” Needle asked.

“Alright, fine, it’s a broken forge tool,” Moon sighed, exasperated. “But some groundlings use weapons that are similar.”

Gift reached out to touch it lightly. “Do you have any more?”

“Keep an eye out, and maybe you’ll find one as we go.” They shouldn’t linger here any longer.

Moon turned and beckoned them after him along the hall. He lead them wide around the place of the fire, turning away whenever they heard footsteps. When they reached the boundary of the metal and metal-and-clay sections of the building, he found a stair and pointed down. “You go down, and look for a boat. I’ll follow you.”

“Wait, what are you going to do?” asked Gift, her eyes narrowing.

“I’ll meet up with you in just a bit.”

“Moon.” Heart crossed her arms, planting herself in front of him firmly. “I know you might want to kill her, but right now, we have to escape.”

He blinked in confusion, then resisted the urge to hiss. Well, he could how she might have come to that conclusion. She must have guessed what had happened when the Fell took Moon away, though she couldn’t know about the existence of other crossbreeds besides the mentor-dakti. “I’m not going to kill the progenitor-queen.” Heart as well as some of the other Arbora looked surprised, then wide-eyed, realizing what he had just said. “As the ruler was bringing me back, I smelled Raksura in another passage. They might be from our court, or they might be from Sky Copper, but either way, we can’t leave them here.”

“Oh!” Heart’s eyes went wide in understanding. “You’re right. We have to save them too.” She nodded decidedly. “Then, we’ll come with you.”

Moon shook his head. “I don’t know if I’ll run into more Fell on the way. It’s too risky.”

“Better to have more people with you, then,” said Heart simply, brushing past him to start up the stair.

“Yeah, she’s right,” said Merit after a moment, hurrying after Heart. At Merit’s words, the others seemed to rouse themselves to follow as well.

Moon sighed, and bounded past them to take the lead with Heart.

They got lucky, only encountering a few stray dakti on the way up. Moon worried whether he was going to be able to find his way back to where he had scented the other Raksura. He had been very distracted when he passed by it before. But the groundlings who built the forge-structure seemed to have put a lot of cross passages in, making it easy enough for him to simply keep going in the right direction, guided by his innate sense of north.

He was just wondering whether they had passed it and should go back and try another hall, when they turned a corner. Moon knew by smell they had reached the right place. Only one dakti was guarding door, and with a single bound Moon took it across the chest with his bar before it could react. Before he could finish it off, Gift leapt past him, bashing its head in with the broken half of a pair of forge-tongs she had found along the way.

This time, though, the dakti didn’t have the keys. Moon hissed in frustration.

“How do we get the door open?” asked Merit, tugging on the handle.

Snap turned to Moon. “How did you get our door open?”

“With the keys,” he said, pacing the hall. “The dakti there had them. But I can’t find the keys to this one.”

“Can’t you use the same key?” asked Dream.

“No, groundlings make different keys for each door,” said Moon. But he tried the other keys in the lock anyways. They didn’t work.

What was he going to do now? He glanced at the Arbora. He could send them back down to look for a boat, while he hunted down dakti until he found one with the right keys, but how long would that take?

“Wait, I have an idea,” said Gift suddenly. Her half-tong was very thick at one end, but the other tapered to a thin edge. She stepped up the side of the door where the hinges were, and slipped the edge of her tong underneath, then pushed. Seeing what she was doing immediately, Moon stepped up beside her gripped the tong beside her to help. Within seconds, the clay in the door cracked, and the hinge snapped off. It was lucky this room wasn’t part of the metal section of the building, or this wouldn’t have worked.

“What are they doing?” Snap asked.

“Let them work,” Heart shushed him.

They quickly finished the other two hinges. Gripping the edges of the door by his finger tips, Moon carefully pulled it out of the way.

Light shone into a dark room, even smaller than the one he and the Arbora had been locked in. Three very small figures huddled against the far wall. Two were in groundling form, with dark hair and bronze skin. The third had green scales and blunted frills. Since Moon had checked and they were still unable to shift here, that meant she must be a queen. Even through the overwhelming stench of Fell, they smelled like fledgling. This had to be the royal clutch from Sky Copper that Stone had told him was missing.

They looked scared. Moon glanced at Heart, but she waved the others back beyond the doorway. “I think all of us are scaring them,” she said softly to Moon. “You go talk to them.”

Moon didn’t think they would trust him any more than they would Heart, covered in blood as he was. But Heart was already under a lot of pressure to take care of the other Arbora, and it had been Moon who insisted on coming here in the first place, so he supposed this was his job.

He took a step inside and crouched down to put himself at eye level with them. “I’m Moon, from Indigo Cloud. Are you from Sky Copper?”

“Maybe,” said the little queen, crouching in front of the other two. “Why do you want to know?” She glanced behind Moon, and he saw that the Arbora were already creeping around the edge of the doorway to get a better look.

“These are Heart, Merit, Snap, Gift, Needle and Dream. We were caught by the Fell too, but now we’re leaving. Do you want to come with us?”

The fledgling queen hesitated, biting her lip. “Will you bring us back to Sky Copper?”

Moon’s chest felt tight. He considered lying to them to get them to come, but it would just make everything that much worse for them later on. Besides, they had surely seen what had happened to their court. “I’m sorry. Your court was destroyed by the Fell. But you can come to Indigo Cloud. They’ll take care of you there.” He felt sure they would. If Wind Sun had been willing to take in the Arbora and warriors from Indigo Cloud, then Indigo Cloud would surely take in these fledglings in a heartbeat. After all, they had even taken in a solitary like him, if grudgingly.

The fledgling queen looked sad, but resigned, as if she already knew her court was gone, and had just been hoping for a different answer. She glanced at the two others, something silent passing between them. “Okay,” she said finally, nodding. She grasped the wrists of the others, pulling them up with her. “I’m Frost, and this is Bitter, and Thorn.”

“We have to go quickly now, so we need to carry you, okay?” Moon said, watching the little queen.

She nodded. He picked up one of the fledgling consorts. Bitter, Frost had said his name was. Frost climbed up on his neck as well. He made to hand her off to Heart, but she wouldn’t let go of him, and then Thorn climbed up on his back. Well, maybe they just wanted to stay together. He supposed as an Aeriat, he seemed the most likely to them to be able to defend them.

As soon as they had the fledglings, they started down the passages as quickly as possible, looking for an exit.

“Do you suppose there are any other Raksura in here?” Dream asked, glancing back.

“I hope not,” said Needle uncertainly.

“I don’t think so,” said Moon. “Lothas, the ruler that was in charge of the Fell that attacked Indigo Cloud, didn’t seem to have brought any Raksura back here before we attacked. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been so desperate to take hostages with him when he fled. Ranea said she punished him for bringing so few Raksura back.”

“Ranea?” Merit asked.

“The half-queen progenitor,” said Moon, not looking at him.

“Oh,” said Merit, falling silent.

Finding an exit turned out to be easy. Once they reached ground-level, exits were everywhere. These groundlings had clearly been very concerned with the need to let people get out quickly in case of a fire. Unfortunately, this would mean the Fell would be able to get out easily as well. But hopefully, the Fell were all up on the higher levels dealing with the fire, and there weren’t nearly as many openings at that level. The groundlings hadn’t bothered putting exits there, since they clearly couldn’t fly, and leaving the building ten stories up would simply have resulted in them falling to their deaths.

When they at last emerged into the fresh air of the outside, everyone breathed deeply. It wasn’t very bright due to the mist rising from the water-channels. But it was just such a relief to be out. Even so, the threat of the Fell loomed behind them like a thorn in Moon’s mind.

There was a brief gap between the giant forge and the rest of the city, but they crossed it quickly, passing onto the metal-paved alleys between the smaller structures. A few of the buildings were square, made out of varying shades of brown and tan clay. But most were circular, with metal panels set into stone foundations. It must have been a large and populous city before the Fell came. Now, overturned carts and bags, ripped pieces of clothing, and crumbling piles of stone where some buildings had half-collapsed littered the ground. Except for Moon’s group, nothing moved. There weren’t any dead groundlings lying openly in the street, but Moon could smell the slight undertones of decay that indicated they wouldn’t have to search far into the structures before they found corpses. Moon had explored groundling ruins before, but those seemed ancient, historical. The silence there was peaceful with the weight of turns of emptiness. Here, where there had been bustling life only a few days ago, the stillness was eerie and unnatural.

They were a few hundred paces from the forge building, when Heart suddenly shifted.

“You can shift!” cried Merit.

Several of the others shushed him. But then everyone had to shift, even the fledglings. It was such a relief to be back in his scaled form, Moon could almost have cried. But they were far from safe yet. “We have to find a boat, preferably one closer to the main river.”

Snap nodded. “I’ll climb up one of the houses and see if I can spot one.”

Moon was worried about the Fell spotting him, but wandering around in circles wasn’t going to do them any good.

Snap came back down after only a minute though. “I see one!” he said excitedly. “This way!”

They followed him through a couple narrow alleys, then took a sharp turn to the right.

Moon smelled the water of the channel before he saw it. Its scent was stagnant, as if things had died in it. But as soon as it came into sight, so did the boat Snap had been leading them to. It was thirty paces or so in length, and without sails. It bobbed gently up against the stony bank, no cables or ropes holding it in place. A metal contraption on one end made that end sink slightly, but Moon couldn’t tell what the device did just from looking. A logical guess, though, would be that it probably powered the boat. But there were also several sets of oars. If they couldn’t figure out how to get the metal contraption to work, they were going to have to row. Luckily, it didn’t seem like this channel was very long, reaching the main river running through the center of the city after only a few rows of buildings.

The Raksura leapt up into the boat. The Arbora started to poke around, examining things.

“What now?” asked Gift, glancing anxiously at the sky. “It’s just sitting here. How do we make it move?”

“We row,” said Moon, remembering Raksura weren’t familiar with boats. There were eight places for rowers, but only seven adult Raksura. “Only six of us should row, so we’ll have an even number on both sides.” He pushed the fledglings over to Heart, and took one of the places, as the others scrambled to find spots as well.

“What should I do?” asked Heart, frowning.

“Keep watch,” he told her seriously.

The oars were very long, but light, and they cut through the water smoothly. Despite its length, the boat quickly started to move under the combined efforts of the Raksura and only a little coaching from Moon. He thought most groundling races he had encountered would be too weak row boats of this size at any reasonable pace. The groundlings here must have been fairly strong. But still, they were probably weaker than Raksura in shifted form.

When the boat reached the main channel, Moon felt it immediately. The water swelled underneath the bottom, creating a sensation of rising, then abruptly the craft was yanked into the swift current. Moon had to pull his oar in to prevent the water from ripping it out of his hands. The buildings started to slide by in a rush.

Dream gave a yelp as she lost her oar.

“You can stop rowing now, pull your oars in!” he told them. “It won’t be of much use in comparison to the river’s current anyways.”

He went up to the front to keep watch beside Heart. No sooner had he gotten there, though, then the fledglings came back to cling to him. He patted Bitter’s head absently, following Heart’s gaze where she was shielding her eyes with her hand.

“Do you see something?” he asked.

She was frowning now. “Something’s up there, on the top of the groundling forge building.”

Moon followed her gaze, shielding his eyes as well. There _was_ something moving around up there, a small dark spot. He squinted.

Suddenly, it became a very large dark spot.

“Kethel!” he swore.

Heart’s expression became tight, and she wrapped her arms around herself. The others looked unhappy as well.

“What do we do?” Snap asked, his voice low with urgency.

The boat had been picking up speed as it passed through the city, and now it hurtled beyond the last line of houses, out between the fields separating it from the forest beyond. The green line of trees was growing larger by the second, but the dark form of the kethel pursuing them was growing faster still.

“As long as you make it into the forest, you said you can hide from the Fell, right?” Moon asked.

“Yes,” said Heart. “By the time the kethel makes it through the canopy, it’ll never be able to find us. Fell are not good scent-trackers.”

They probably couldn’t smell anything over their own stench. “That thing must be the propelling-device of the boat,” Moon said, gesturing to the metal contraption at the other end. “Try to get it to work, it might make you move faster.”

Gift jumped up and went over to it, scrutinizing it more carefully, and Merit followed her.

Meanwhile, Moon pushed the fledglings back over to Heart, stretching his wings. “I’ll go keep the kethel occupied.”

Heart’s eyes widened in horror. “But, you can’t kill a kethel on your own!”

Moon bared his teeth. It hurt to hear, even if he knew it was true. After all, that was the reason he and the Arbora had been captured in the first place, because he hadn’t been a match for the third kethel. “I don’t have to kill it, just hold if off long enough for you to get to the forest. I’ll catch up to you after that.”

“Are you –,” Snap started to ask.

But before he could finish, Moon snapped his wings open and leapt off the boat into the air.

“No, take the fledglings and…” he heard Heart call after him, but the rest of what she was saying was whisked away by the wind.

Decisively, he turned to face the large, dark shape hurtling toward them.

He angled towards it, and the distance closed fast. Just as it was about to slam into him, he ducked under it, dragging his claws across its stomach. They did little damage, merely scraping its hard scales, but it still turned, snapping at him with its jaws.

He tucked in his wings and dropped down further, then twisted to the side as it dived after him.

When it spread its wings to circle back up for another pass, he dropped down on its head, jabbing a claw at its eyes. It beat him away with a swipe of its huge hand, and he lost his grip on its scales, tumbling through the air. He caught a glimpse of the boat, only halfway to the forest.

As the kethel’s shadow fell over him, he winced. Was this it? Was he going to lose again? He gritted his teeth. No! He wouldn’t fail the Arbora again; he couldn’t fail Jade again. He could do this. He knew he would never be able to escape the kethel. He couldn’t beat it, and it was too fast for him to fly away. But he just had to distract it long enough for the Arbora to make it to the forest. What happened after that didn’t matter.

He dodged out of the way of the kethel’s dive, driving his claws into the cracks in the plating at the base of its wing. It twisted violently, attempting to shake him off, but he just clung on all the harder.

Suddenly, a blow from its tail crushed him against its back, knocking his breath out, and he felt his claws come loose. When the kethel twisted again, he found himself falling through the air.

He flapped his wings to right himself, looking around. Where was the kethel? Where were the Arbora? He made out the line of the forest, and a small, speeding boat, just as it passed beneath the canopy of the trees. He let out a half-breath of relief. They must have gotten the propelling-device to work.

Just then, a flash of black in the corner of his eye caught his attention, and he swung around to find himself face to face with a ruler. Janeas. Before he could react, a wing hit him in the head, and he tumbled through air and darkness into oblivion.

Chapter 3

Moon was woken by the pounding in his head. He groaned and rolled onto his side, sucking in a breath. The scent of Fell brought him the rest of the way to alertness.

He rolled into a crouch, but in the next moment sank back down to sitting. There was no one else in the room, a room he knew well. It was the same storage room he had been imprisoned in with the Arbora earlier. The crack in the wall was unmistakable. But no Arbora were here now.

_They must have escaped then_ , he thought. Unless, of course, the Fell had moved them to some other room they thought was more secure. But why would they move the Arbora, and not Moon? He thought back, trying to remember what had happened. He had watched as the groundling boat passed into the forest, that much he could recall clearly. Then Janeas had shown up, something had hit him hard, and that was all he could remember. He reached up a hand to touch the back of his head, and winced. His fingers came away with a dusting of dried blood. How long had he been unconscious?

Now that the Arbora weren’t here, he went to take the spot next to the crack himself. He thought of his last glimpse of Heart, clutching the fledglings, her forehead creased in worry. No matter what happened to him after this, as long as the others had escaped, it had all been worth it. If they could keep themselves hidden in the forest for long enough, Jade was sure to find them. She wouldn’t just abandon Arbora of her own court, Moon felt sure. Not after all the effort Pearl and Jade had went to, to rescue the colony from the Fell.

Jade. He clenched his teeth. There was no way she would want him anymore, not after…Ranea. For a moment he had a flash of hope that maybe Jade wouldn’t realize, maybe he could pretend nothing had happened. But the next second, he remembered that the Arbora knew. And they would undoubtedly tell Jade.

So, Moon was back to being just a feral solitary again, with no chance of becoming a real member of Indigo Cloud. But still, he had helped them retake the colony, and helped the Arbora escape, hadn’t he? Would Jade feel she owed him enough to come rescue him?

_Rescue him from a whole flight of Fell, risking her remaining warriors for a single solitary?_ he thought bitterly. That wasn’t very likely. Even so, he couldn’t quash the small flash of hope he felt, thinking of her, imagining she might come for him despite everything. She _had_ cared about him at one point, hadn’t she?

Or had she? After all, Pearl had told him, before they started the attack with the Fell-poison, that Jade hadn’t put the scent marker on him that would make him her consort. The older queen had said Jade already had a clutch, so didn’t need him anymore. If that had been all Jade wanted from him, then…was there any reason at all for her to come after him now? The more he thought about it, the more he realized just how little reason Jade had to rescue him. Jade already had all of _her_ people back. All the ones that survived, anyways.

Moon blinked back tears. No, he shouldn’t be thinking like this. Jade didn’t owe him anything. Helping the Arbor and the fledglings escape had been his own decision to repay his debt to her, and he wasn’t going to let that get overshadowed by pointless resentment.

The door to the room slammed open, so abruptly Moon leapt to his feet and tried to shift. Of course, he failed. He backed away into the corner, as Janeas stalked into the room, his wings half-unfurling in threat.

“What do you want?” Moon asked.

Janeas just snarled, grabbing him by the arm and dragging him out and away.

The walk to the top level of the forge didn’t take long, and Janeas gave Moon no more chances for escape. Moon recognized the opening to Ranea’s room when they reached it. He tried to struggle out of Janeas’s grip, but the older ruler had no patience remaining, slamming Moon into a wall. During the instant Moon was stunned, Janeas dragged him through the doorway.

In the center of the room, Ranea paced in shifted form, her rough, black scales dull in the dim light. To the right, Venras crouched in groundling form, bruises running up the side of his face. Beside him was another ruler, also in groundling form, that Moon didn’t recognize at first. He had three long half-healed gashes along his cheek and neck, though. This must be the ruler they had fought back at the colony, Moon realized. Lothas. Now that he looked more carefully, he could see the resemblance between his groundling and shifted forms.

On the other side of the room was a dakti, its eyes fixed intently on Ranea. Moon did a double-take. It was dakti without wings, with the heavy build of an Arbora. This had to be the other mentor-dakti. Was it the only one left, or were there more of them?

Ranea’s ash-blue eyes snapped around to fix on him as soon as Janeas dragged him in, and she stopped pacing. He could smell her even from this distance.

Moon tried to resist the urge to flinch when she looked at him, and failed. Maybe she was so angry with him over helping the others escape, she would simply kill him outright. At least then he wouldn’t have to look at her anymore. The thought of being eaten by Fell wasn’t pleasant, but Moon had always expected that he would die by being eaten by something.

There was a movement of air behind him as Janeas shifted down to groundling, and went over to stand by Venras and Lothas.

Ranea didn’t look at him, her eyes fixed on Moon. She stepped slowly towards him.

He started to inch backwards toward the doorway, but didn’t get more than a pace, before she leapt forward so suddenly her form was a blur. Instantly, her hand was around his throat, lifting him into the air. He pulled at her claws weakly, scraping his hands on her rough scales.

“How dare you,” she hissed, her tone oddly flat yet somehow dripping with menace.

Moon managed to bare his teeth, but he expected it looked more like a grimace of pain than a threat. “You Fell are…too stupid…to keep us captive,” he managed in between attempts to gasp. Spots started to form in his vision.

“You’re killing him,” said Janeas quietly.

Ranea hissed, and dropped him on the ground, turning on the older ruler instead. “And whose fault is that?” She stalked towards them. Venras and Lothas huddled behind Janeas, who looked uncomfortable but resigned. “You were the ones who let them escape,” Ranea accused.

“We were careless,” Janeas admitted, lowering his head in admission. “But we won’t let it happen again. All we do is to serve you, my queen.”

Ranea’s spines twitched in a gesture Moon couldn’t guess the meaning of. He wasn’t sure even another Raksuran queen could have read it, considering Ranea had been raised by Fell. “This did not happen because of your carelessness alone. This happened because Lothas coveted what was not his.” Ranea’s spines flared, and her wings half-extended. _That_ gesture Moon could read.

Lothas cowered. “I apologize, my queen. I will never do it again.”

Ranea still looked like she might rip his head off at any second, but Janeas intervened again. “My queen, now that some of the Raksura have escaped, they will go back and tell the rest where our flight is. With only three kethel, it will be difficult to fight them, especially if the old consort has recovered. Perhaps…it is time for us to move on.”

Ranea bared her fangs. “I will be the one to decide when we move.”

Suddenly, she turned, and Moon noticed that the wingless dakti had crept up to her when they were speaking, and was now pulling on her tail-spikes. She reached out a hand to it, and at first Moon thought she was going to rip its head off for disturbing her. But instead, incongruously, she reached down and patted its head. “What is it, Demus?”

“I want to move, too. There’s no fresh groundlings here anymore. I don’t like the rotten ones.”

Ranea stroked its head some more. “Yes,” she finally said. “We’ve been here too long. It’s time to go. We’ll leave tomorrow.” She flicked her tail at Janeas. “Get the flight ready to leave.”

Moon felt a flash of panic. “You’re leaving!” Moon was so startled he said it out loud, still kneeling on the ground where Ranea had dropped him.

Ranea turned to him as if remembering he was there, and he instantly regretted speaking. She came forward to crouch in front of him. He tried to lean away, but she put her hand on the back of his head holding him in place, her claws pressing painfully against the bruises there.

“ _We’re_ leaving,” she said, her eyes fastening on his. It took him a moment to realize she was correcting him. She leaned forward and bit the side of his neck just hard enough to draw blood, and he shuddered. “You’re mine now, and I’ll never let you go again. Remember that.”

The next day, Janeas came to get him from the storage room again, and brought him out into the misty city. The whole flight was assembled on the metal paving outside the giant forge. Most of the dakti were busy climbing into sacs for the kethel to carry. Moon wondered whether they would put him in a sac as well, like they had done with the Arbora. On the one hand it disgusted him. But on the other, if he could find some way to break it open from the inside, he might be able to fall far enough out of Demus’s range to shift and escape.

But the sacs were all closed up, with Moon still outside of them. Demus, in his wingless shifted form, helped the larger, darker shape of the progenitor up onto the back of the biggest kethel, then clambered up after her.

It was only when at last Ranea appeared that Moon discovered how he was to be transported. She flicked her tail, and as the kethel prepared to take off, Janeas grabbed him around the waist, pressing him against the scales of his chest with a clawed hand. Moon yelped and struggled, until Janeas pressed him so hard he couldn’t get a breath, then leaned down to whisper into his ear, “Be still. It’s going to be a long flight.”

Then, the wind of the kethels’ wings passed over them, Janeas leapt into the air.

As Janeas gained altitude and angled out over the forest, Moon twisted just enough to get a last glimpse of the destroyed city they were leaving, the forge with the giant shafts jutting out from among the other buildings like a single tooth in an empty gum. _Now, Jade won’t be able to find me_ , Moon thought, as the city disappeared behind the level of the trees. He was surprised by the thought. Hadn’t he known from the start that Jade wouldn’t come look for him, that she had no reason to?

Yet even still, some part of him must have been hoping against hope that she would come and rescue him, and take him out of this nightmare. It was only now, with the last possibility of rescue disappearing into the distance, that the truth finally sank in. There was no one coming to save him. He was on his own, just as it had always been. That was what it meant to be a solitary. To be alone.

He hoped Heart and the others managed to find Jade and Pearl. _They_ weren’t meant to be alone. And despite everything, he wanted Jade to know he had kept his word and protected her court.

They stopped just before nightfall. One of the rulers had apparently spotted a small groundling camp, and they fell on it as the sun was setting. Moon tried not to listen to the screams.

Though he was still a prisoner of the Fell, it was a relief to be on the ground again. Being carried by Janeas was even worse than being carried by Stone, since Janeas didn’t care at all about Moon’s comfort, and on top of that Moon had to spend the entire flight in groundling form.

The Fell had appropriated the small hide tents that the groundlings had been using. Moon was left out in the open while the Fell arranged themselves, but a ruler was always watching him, and Demus hadn’t forgotten him, since he was still unable to shift. The flight might currently be only a fraction of the size it had been before fighting Indigo Cloud, but there were still more than enough Fell here to make it impossible for Moon to slip away. At one point, a dakti brought him some “food,” obviously dead groundling. After the long flight and not eating in days, he was hungry, but even if he was starving, he didn’t think he could ever bring himself to eat groundling.

Just as he was thinking they would leave him here to sleep, Janeas came back for him. And brought him to Ranea.

Afterwards, he was just as glad to be dragged out of Ranea’s tent again. He curled up in a ball on the ground. The night cold didn’t bother him as much as it would have a real groundling, but he was still uncomfortable without being able to shift into his more cold-resistant scaled form.

Though the rulers were always watching him, they mostly left him alone. Between the cold and the Ranea-stench he despaired of ever washing off his skin, he couldn’t sleep, and instead he huddled, trapped in his thoughts.

What if the Arbora and the fledglings had hidden too well in the forest, and Jade missed them? Would she be able to track the Fell flight? If she came and found him first, he could lead her to them. But there was no point to idle fantasy.

But what if something happened to them before Jade could even get there? The forest was dangerous, and the thought of the fledglings, alone in the woods with only Arbora for protection, reminded him of himself and his four siblings, living in a tree as Sorrow raised them alone. He wouldn’t wish that sort of life-or-death upbringing on anyone.

But all that was incredibly unlikely, he told himself. The Arbora would be looking out for Jade. They would leave some sign so she could find them. She would come get them, they would join up with Pearl and move to their new colony, and the colony would be happy enough without him.

Still, he couldn’t help but wonder, if he had escaped with them and gone back to Jade, what she would have done. After all, she had known what he had done with Liheas back in Sarasail. She had known he had been with groundlings. And none of that had seemed to bother her, at least not enough for her to push him away. But it was different now, he knew. Liheas, as a ruler, was more like another male warrior or a consort. And Ranea was more like a Raksuran queen, and the queens were very picky when it came to their consorts and other queens.

He understood the principle. He had once lived in a groundling settlement that was mostly herdsmen, where he had known a woman who had tended her family’s sheep, while her husband had raised the cattle. One day during a drought, when she had went out further away from the settlement than normal to find grazing land, she had encountered a male member of a neighboring tribe while alone. Moon only heard the full story later from another of the herdsmen who had liked to gossip. When she had come back, it had been obvious what had happened, and she repeated the story in tears to the elders of the tribe. Who had turned their backs on her when her husband kicked her out of his cabin. She had stayed with her family a few days, then left the tribe with little more than the clothes on her back.

Moon didn’t know what had happened to her. He had to leave in a hurry soon after, when someone saw him shift. There hadn’t been enough trees in the area to really get good cover.

Even if he managed to escape the Fell, he knew he couldn’t go back to Jade or Indigo Cloud. He wouldn’t come to them crying or begging to be let in, only to be turned away. But unlike the herdswoman, he had been wandering all his life. He could always go back to his old lifestyle, if he could just get away from the damn Fell.

Hopefully he could manage it sooner rather than later. If he waited too long, Ranea…well, he wasn’t going to think about it.

The flight left the next day, Janeas carrying Moon again. Moon was tired from not being able to sleep the previous night, the wind was cold through his ripped clothes, and he felt weak from hunger. The flight was the most miserable yet.

That night, they didn’t find any groundling camp, so they stopped in a patch of woods. Moon was left alone at first but the rulers kept watch over him like the previous night.

When Janeas came to drag him off, he thought it was going to be to Ranea again. But instead, Janeas’s claws squeezing his wrist, the ruler dragged him deeper out into the woods, into a clearing far enough away to be out of earshot of the others. But apparently not out of the range of Demus, since Moon still couldn’t shift.

He jerked his wrist away. “What are we doing out here?”

Janeas turned to him slowly. His breathing was faster even than Moon’s, who had been in groundling form the whole time. Though they had been walking fast, there was no way Janeas was winded merely from exertion.

“Don’t you remember what happened to Lothas when he tried this?” Moon hissed, backing away.

Janeas grinned, revealing his fangs. “Lothas had failed her, and coveted what was not his. This favor, I have been bestowed by my queen, for my success.”

Moon felt a sinking feeling in his stomach.

“It’s not –,” he started to argue, but before he could finish, Lothas jerked him around and pushed him against a tree. His scales, pressing against Moon’s back, were smoother than Ranea’s, but colder. His teeth against Moon’s neck, though, felt just as sharp.

Moon struggled, even though he knew it was pointless – as pointless as with Ranea. “Don’t resist,” Janeas hissed in his ear. “It’s too,” he gasped, “thrilling.”

At least it wasn’t Ranea this time, Moon thought.

When Janeas, dragging him back among the Fell, deposited him in front of Ranea, he cried. Ranea just laughed at him.

The Fell continued flying north-west, attacking small groundling settlements wherever they found them. About a week in, Moon woke up one morning to find he was so weak from hunger he couldn’t stand without falling. _Good_ , he thought. _Not much longer now and I won’t have to see any Fell ever again_.

When Moon couldn’t get up, Janeas came over and stared down at Moon for a minute in silence. Then he went away.

When he came back, he had an arm in his hand, its skin the mottled-green of the groundling race they had attacked the previous night. He knelt next to Moon, and for the next hour, with a patience Moon didn’t know any ruler was capable of possessing, forced Moon to eat it as he gagged and choked.

It was so unpleasant Moon gave up resisting eating groundling after that. Which he supposed was the point.

The flight flew on for weeks. Moon looked for opportunities to escape, but found none. After his first escape attempt back at the forge city, the rulers never stopped watching him.

Even tonight. The flight had landed in the middle of an open plain with little to no cover. Moon, left alone at last, was curled up against the side of a boulder. Still, he could still feel Janeas occasionally glancing over at him from where he and the other rulers were interrogating a groundling, the last left alive from the small caravan of merchants they had attacked earlier. Moon tried not to look at the man, just as he had tried not to look at the other blue-skinned groundling merchants as the Fell killed them.

Watching the Fell attack settlement after settlement, Moon had become numb to hearing the screams of the dying groundlings. Instead of feeling sympathy for them, or even pity, he started to resent them. Why did they always scream and run? Why didn’t they ever fight back?

But Moon already knew the answer. Without shifted forms, they were just as defenseless against the Fell as he was. If even he couldn’t do anything, how could he expect them to? To fight the Fell, they needed something stronger, something that could shift, something like Raksura – he cut the thought off before it could go any further. There was no use wishing for the impossible.

Huddling closer to the boulder, Moon stared up at the stars between the branches. They were so free, to dance where they pleased in the vast sky. Why couldn’t he be free like them? The desire to fly again was overwhelming. Would he someday forget the feeling of wind on his wings? The feeling of protection from having tough scales instead of vulnerable skin? The feeling of security in Jade’s arms?

No, thought Moon. He wouldn’t live long enough to forget the former two, and as for the last, he had already forgotten.

He rubbed at his skin, though he knew it would do nothing about Ranea’s wrongness-scent, which seemed to stick to him like a blanket. He had been taken by groundlings before, and even by Fell. But somehow, with Ranea, it was a hundred times worse. What made her so different?

Perhaps it was because before, it had always been a calculated choice on his part. He might have known he would be kicked out of a settlement or attacked if he refused or resisted, and that it would have put him in danger, but he had always known in the back of his mind that he still had the option to shift and make a break for it if he couldn’t bear it anymore. With Ranea, he couldn’t shift, he couldn’t fight back, he couldn’t do anything. The sense of helplessness was crushing.

He wrapped his hands around his knees. At first he had balked at taking the clothes of dead groundlings, but eventually his own clothing became so ripped it was little more than rags, and the nights here were cold. Leaving behind the torn garments, he had lost the last traces of the time he had spent at Indigo Cloud, among Raksura.

After so many years alone, he had finally found his people, only to lose them again. True, he hadn’t fit in perfectly, but he had been trying to adapt. He thought, given enough time, he could have managed to find a place for himself in Indigo Cloud. Most courts wouldn’t have been willing to take in a feral solitary. He had been lucky beyond belief for the first court he found to be the one that was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. And to find Jade, the one queen who might have been willing to take him.

But it had been too much luck to last. Of course, the Fell had to come and ruin everything. Now, even Jade wouldn’t want him. Even if he could get away, even if he could find another court, he knew well enough no queen would ever want him again, no other court would ever take him in.

He realized then that he was never going to escape the Fell. He was going to die here. He could only hope it would be sooner rather than later.

He must have dozed off, because he woke some time later to the lowered voices of the rulers talking on the other side of the rock. They must have just finished interrogating the merchant, because they were still talking in Kedaic. Moon had noticed that to the Fell, one language seemed to be the same as another, and they often forgot to switch back to the Fell language after speaking something else.

“They’re just groundlings. Why should we be cautious? Besides, he said the city wasn’t that large.” Venras’s voice floated across the rock to Moon through the night air.

“Our flight is smaller now,” Janras countered firmly. “We can’t afford to take too many risks. And you should know by now groundling judgments of what settlements are large or small vary too much to be counted on.”

Venras hissed.

“But she wants to stop and settle somewhere now,” Lothas put in more diplomatically. “Even if you tell her the dangers…will she listen?”

Janeas sighed, making him seem almost like a person, instead of the person-eating monster that Moon knew him to be. “I know. I suppose it’s just as well that she decided to stop here, and not before. There’s no chance of the Raksura following us this far, so it should be relatively safe. And she’s had nothing but clutching on her mind for weeks.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Venras put in hesitantly. “With our flight so small now after all our recent losses, more kethel or rulers would be good.”

Janeas hissed. “It would, if she would only think about clutching with any of _us_. All she talks about now is half-breeds, half-breeds, half-breeds. Until she clutches with the consort, I don’t think we’re likely to get any more clutches of our own.”

Lothas made a small sound in his throat that sounded like disappointment. “Has she got a clutch yet?”

“No, she’d tell me if she had.” Moon heard footsteps as Janeas started to pace. “For once, the difficulty of clutching cross-species is working in our favor. If she had clutched weeks ago when she first started trying, we might have had to stop before we were sure the Raksura had lost our trail.” He sighed. “At least this city doesn’t sound so bad. I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky to have found a place to stay at all.”

Moon shivered, where he still curled hidden against the other side of the rock. What would Janeas think if he knew what Moon knew, that there was no reason for Indigo Cloud to follow them? That he had spent all these weeks worrying for nothing?

But hearing that Ranea didn’t have a clutch yet was strangely relieving. He had tried not to think about it, but he couldn’t help but know that the reason why Ranea took him again and again. In his darker hours, he wondered what the babies would be like. Would they all be like little Fell, hateful and violent, with empty eyes? Would they treat him with contempt the way the rulers did, and eat groundlings without a second thought? _Ha_ , thought Moon, _I’m one to judge for that. Don’t I eat groundling now too?_

He hated to think of babies, his babies, being anything like that. But if they came out like Raksura, feeling and loving and caring, wouldn’t that just be worse? How could he bear to see them grow up among monsters?

And even if he did find a way to escape…if Ranea had clutched before then, he would be leaving them to their fate. He couldn’t…he just couldn’t think about it anymore. Besides, there was nothing he could do. He would probably be long dead before they were born anyways. If he could just die quickly enough, maybe Ranea wouldn’t be able to get a clutch at all.

The next day, the flight split up for the first time since they had set out, apart from when now and then a ruler had gone ahead to scout. Ranea, Janeas, Venras, and two of the kethel took most of the dakti and went ahead, while leaving Lothas with Demus, Moon, the progenitor, and one of the kethel. From what Moon gathered, the city they were trying to attack was large, and they expected intense fighting, so they didn’t want to risk bringing the more vulnerable members of their group until they were sure the city was theirs.

Lothas spent the morning talking with the progenitor while Moon tried to make himself inconspicuous. But in the afternoon, the progenitor, who was old and sickly, fell asleep. And Lothas turned to other amusements.

Since Lothas was supposed to be guarding Moon, no amount of ‘making himself inconspicuous’ could really change the fact that Lothas could find him in an instant.

“Don’t be like that,” the ruler was saying in Raksuran, squatting in his groundling form a few paces away from where Moon was crouching. His long, black hair fell in a sheet down his back, and he wore light tan garments with fraying silver embroidery that were stolen from the last groundling caravan the flight had destroyed. “I know you don’t like it when she and Janeas shift, but I’ll stay in my groundling form the whole time, see?” He smiled, a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

Moon guessed he must not have permission from Ranea to do this, or he wouldn’t be acting so diffidently. He was probably hoping that with the thrill from taking the city so fresh, Ranea would overlook his actions unless Moon made a big deal about it.

“Why don’t you go amuse yourself with the kethel?” Moon spat back.

Lothas’s eyes were dark. “But the kethel isn’t pretty like you are.” He shuffled closer, reaching out a hand to touch Moon’s cheek, even as Moon drew back. “Pretty consort.”

Suddenly, Lothas paused, his eyes glazing over. Moon took the opportunity to back away as far as he could, before the kethel growled at him warningly.

After a minute, Lothas came back to himself, straightening up. He turned to Demus. “She took the city. Wake her,” he flicked a claw at the progenitor, “and get ready to leave.” He was still speaking Raksuran.

Demus hissed in annoyance at being ordered around.

Lothas shifted and flared his wings. “The sooner you do it, the sooner we get back to the rest,” he snapped.

The mentor-dakti flicked his tail and went off to wake the progenitor.

As they approached the city, Moon started to smell the smoke even when the grey cloud was no more than a smudge on the horizon.

Demus, the progenitor, and the rest of the dakti rode on the back of the kethel. Venras flew beside them, carrying Moon. Normally, it was Janeas who would carry him. Moon suspected Janeas didn’t trust the other, younger rulers with him because he worried Moon would try to escape. Actually, Moon had all but given up on that. This time, though, Janeas had gone ahead to participate in the fighting.

They weren’t flying particularly fast. The few times Ranea had wanted the flight to move at top speed, Janeas and the other rulers had landed on the backs of the kethel as well, but normally the rulers liked to fly under their own power. Moon understood only too well. How he longed to fly again, even just once, on his own wings.

At last, the panorama of the burning city came into full view. Grey clouds billowed up from the earth, the wind twisting them like vines. The cloud of smoke rose far above the fires that were producing them. The city must have been burning for a while. The pillars of smoke half-obscured the view of the foothills behind, which lead up to a mountain range in the distance. The groundlings must have built their city at the edge of the plains.

When he finally got a better view of the city, Moon thought at first they had burned it entirely to the ground. No building stood more than a story high, and most were even shorter than that. How did the Fell expect to live in the place long-term, he thought, if they destroyed it to this extent?

But a closer look showed that most of the buildings, though short, were uncharred by the fires that still flickered in some sections of the city. Rather, the buildings had been short to begin with, most of them half the height of regular groundling structures, with thatched yellow roofs.

Were the groundlings that lived here that small? he wondered briefly. But when he looked further out, he saw a few dakti herding captured groundlings, green-skinned and heavy-looking, and not much shorter than the dakti, into an opening in the ground leading into one of the buildings.

_Oh_ , he realized, _most of the city must be underground_. A strange choice for a place the Fell would want to stay, but then, he never really understood what the Fell were thinking, even after traveling with them all these weeks. He hoped he never would.

The area dotted with yellow-roofed structures stretched out a fair distance, forming a settlement definitely larger than a village, but not enough for Moon to call it particularly large for a city. But then, he assumed he was seeing only the surface. The city could be much larger underground.

As Venras lead the group in, a black shape swooped up to meet them. Janeas. On closer look, Moon realized the older ruler’s scales were burned in some places. Apparently these groundlings hadn’t let themselves be eaten as easily as the ones the flight had come across so far.

Janeas tipped his wings, a gesture Moon had come to recognize as a command to follow among the Fell.

Venras bobbed in assent, and the kethel followed along as they crossed above the yellow roofs, dodging around pillars of smoke.

Suddenly, shouts came from below. Moon looked, and was surprised to see a small cluster of green-skinned groundlings, the same type as the captives from before. But unlike the captives, these were armed with jagged black weapons of some sort, as long as swords but wider, with which they were fending off two attacking dakti.

At first Moon thought the dakti would take them out easily, but with a strangely fluid movement, one of the groundlings stepped forward, swiping with his weapon and slicing deep into the dakti’s throat.

Venras growled in surprise, Moon feeling the sound through his skin rather than hearing it over the wind. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Janeas angle his wings downward for a dive.

But before Janeas could reach them, one of the groundlings looked up, saw them all in the air, and lifted his weapon, which Moon realized was very unlike those the other groundlings were carrying. Where the others were flat, this one was cylindrical and wide, though just as long, with a bulbous section on the back end. He pointed it up at the Fell. And at Moon.

Flame seemed to spit out of the end and disappear, and Moon just had time to realize it had fired some sort of projectile, when something struck his right shoulder, and an enormous amount of force knocked him spinning.

The air roared in his ears, and his whole body felt numb. The wind was all around him, and he realized Venras wasn’t holding him anymore.

He was falling. The sky and earth spun, as he struggled to get his balance in weightless freefall. He moved his arms, and pain spiked through his right shoulder, so much he saw dark spots in his vision. When his sight cleared, the green and brown ground was rushing up to meet him.

He was going to die. Since he couldn’t shift, he couldn’t fly. Even so, he tried it anyways.

And suddenly he had wings and scales, for the first time in weeks. But even as the fact he had just managed to shift sunk in, waves of pain shot through the entire right side of his body. The instinct to stop moving and stop exacerbating the pain warred against the instinct to _flap now or you’re going to hit the ground and die_. Flapping won out, but just barely.

It was agonizing, but he pushed against the air, and it buoyed him up. His actions came just in time. He could almost have reached out and touched the low roof-tops as he swung around to glide upwards again.

How had he managed to shift? Had Demus stopped using his powers? He looked up into the air where the Fell had been. The kethel was twisting in circles, slowly descending. One of its wings seemed to not be working right, and no matter how it flapped, it couldn’t hold the weight it was carrying anymore. The progenitor and a few dakti still clung to its back, but none of the dakti looked like the wingless form of Demus. The groundling must have shot his strange projectile weapon at the kethel as well. Either Demus was too distracted to think about Moon now, or he was dead. Moon hoped ardently for the latter.

He searched the air near the kethel for Lothas, but saw nothing. If Moon had been clipped in the shoulder, though, from the angle the groundling had fired, that meant the projectile would have hit Lothas full-on in the chest. Could the ruler have even survived that?

He looked down toward where the groundlings were, only to see Janeas in their midst, his claws and teeth a frenzy of slashing. They weren’t going to make it.

How had the Fell been so careless as to let groundlings ambush them? They must not have searched the buildings properly, and some of the groundlings had hid and made a counterattack. The Fell probably hadn’t been expecting them to have weapons with that sort of range, either. Too bad they only seemed to have had the one.

But what did that matter to Moon? After all, now, for the first time in weeks, Moon was in shifted form, and no ruler was watching him. Ranea was still nowhere in sight. Moon was startled to realize that what he had given up on as hopeless, was now right here in front of him. This was his chance to escape.

The injuries along his wing were painful, but not enough to stop him from flying. Not when so much was on the line.

He turned, and as fast as he could, shot away across the city through the smoke, out over the plains, towards the mountains.

Chapter 4

At first, he kept checking behind him every few seconds to see if the Fell were following, tasting the air constantly for traces of Fell scent. But after half an hour, once the smoke of the groundling city was lost in the distance and the horizon was still clear, let himself go down to checking only every couple of minutes.

The pain in his wing, so intense at first, had eventually died down to a bearable ache. He wasn’t sure how long he could fly on it, and he was probably making his injuries worse by doing so, but he didn’t see that he had a choice. He was just lucky he was able to fly at all.

After another hour, though, the throbbing along his wing and side started to build up again, especially at the joints. That, combined with his overall weakness from being half-starved and unable to shift for weeks, made every flap of his wings a new effort. But he pressed on. He would sooner fly on until he dropped dead of exhaustion than let himself get caught again.

He reached the wooded foothills just as the sun began to sink. His wings were so heavy it felt like he was trying to flap dead grasseaters instead of his own skin and bones. Out of pure exhaustion, he decided to risk a break.

Swooping low over the treetops, he found a river that cut through the light wood, and followed it down a hill into a valley, where a herd of docile-looking grasseaters were grazing near the bank.

It was at that moment, when he realized he could just drop down and catch one and eat it because no rulers were watching him, that it hit home to him that he was really free. Despite the pain, despite his fear of the Fell coming after him, despite everything, his chest constricted in intense joy. Free! He was free!

Though his injured wing hampered his movements, the grasseaters weren’t fast or large enough to make hunting them a challenge, and soon he was scarfing one down, so fast he almost made himself sick.

Then he waded into the river and washed the blood off his scales. And then washed again. And again. Eventually he shifted to groundling and washed in that form too, despite the fact shifting transferred his injuries back to his other form, causing him to nearly pass out.

But no matter how much he scrubbed his skin with dried leaves, and no matter how long he soaked, the Ranea-scent just wouldn’t come off.

He set his clothes on a couple of rocks and let them dry in the last rays of the setting sun, while he curled up in a knot of treeroots and cried.

But he didn’t have time to indulge in feeling sorry for himself for too long. Not if he wanted to remain free. As soon as the sun set, he put on his clothes, and shifted again.

It had been a mistake to shift down, he knew. The injuries in his shoulder had transferred to his wing when he shifted the first time, then back to his shoulder when he shifted again, and now back to his wing, getting worse with each transfer. Two of those shifts weren’t even necessary. He hadn’t been thinking rationally.

But it was too late to do anything about it now, he thought remotely, as he gritted his teeth and pushed off the ground.

He sighed in relief once he managed to get into the air, despite the raging pain all along his right side. He had flow with worse, he told himself. Not recently, but still. He would just have to keep going.

He flew through the night, his wing throbbing worse and worse. But every time he wanted to stop, he thought of Janeas and Ranea, and kept going.

When the sun rose behind him at last, illuminating the mountains ahead, it also illuminated a bank of thunderclouds sweeping in from the south. Normally, Moon hated thunderstorms. But right now, he could have laughed for joy, if he hadn’t been in so much pain. A thunderstorm would hide his scent and direction, and slow down any Fell trying to follow him. He was still checking the horizon behind him every few minutes, looking for dark spots. A couple times he had mistaken large birds for rulers or kethel and panicked for a minute, until he realized his mistake.

He turned, and flew directly into the thunderstorm.

Even when the rain started, he kept going. It wasn’t until it was pouring down in sheets and he could barely see ten paces in front of him, and the thunder was so loud it sounded as if it came from directly above him, that at last he stopped and let himself down through the canopy of trees.

It was dark in the branches, and wet, and cold, and his wing hurt. But eventually he found a knothole in a larger tree that wasn’t quite as soaked as the forest outside, and he curled up within it. He was so tired. For a half hour or so, he tried to rest in his shifted form, but he couldn’t sleep, and the exhaustion was unbearable. So he shifted to groundling again.

Dimly wondering whether he was even going to be able to fly next time he shifted back to his winged form, he drifted off into sleep.

When he woke up, the sky was the clear, bright color of late afternoon, the sun dipping down toward the mountains. The branches outside were still dripping, so the storm couldn’t have been over for very long.

He climbed up the tree, still in groundling form and avoiding using his right hand, and carefully poked his head out above the tops of the leaves. As far as he could see, nothing was flying up there but a distant flock of small birds.

Hopefully, the storm would be enough to keep the Fell off his trail.

With no little trepidation, he attempted to shift. And managed it, though now his right wing joint felt like it was on fire. Despite the pain, he took off again, turning south instead of continuing toward the line of the mountains. He didn’t know how long he could continue like this. But if he could get just a bit further, enough to be sure he had lost the Fell entirely, then he could stop for as long as he needed to wait for himself to heal.

Of course, that would only stop the Fell from tracking him by normal means. If Demus was still alive and could scry his location, nothing he did would let him get away. But the Fell were probably too busy recovering from the last attack by the green-skinned groundlings to worry about a single escaped consort. At least, Moon could only hope.

The next few days passed in a blur. He flew through the nights and the days, pausing to rest only when he could no longer go on, and once to catch and eat another grasseater. He did manage not to shift down to groundling again, no matter how tired he got, not that it was doing him much good. His wing didn’t seem to be healing. He was no mentor, but if anything, it felt like it was getting worse. The continuous flying was probably exacerbating it.

Late in the morning on the third day, he stopped on a rocky patch on top of a low hill to rest and decide what to do. He thought he had been flying long enough now that if he hadn’t lost the Fell already, he never would. If Demus was still alive, then no amount of additional flying would make any difference.

His injuries and the pain were increasingly slowing him down as the days passed. Stopping to hide somewhere and rest for a few days was starting to sound more and more attractive. If he did, his wing might actually start to heal, and then he could get some real distance covered. If it didn’t heal…well, Moon would think about that when it happened. He didn’t fancy walking to the nearest groundling settlement, especially when he didn’t even know where another groundling settlement might be, but he felt sure he could manage it if he had to.

The rocks were warm beneath the soles of his feet, and he thought he might find somewhere with some cover and go to sleep. Even after three days, even though he still feared that the Fell might be following him, he still felt irrationally pleased by the idea that he could stop and sleep whenever he wanted to, and there was no one to stop him, to tell him he had to go on, or that he had to do anything he didn’t want to do.

Being a solitary wasn’t really that bad, he thought idly. He could stop when he pleased, go when he pleased, catch grasseaters when he pleased. It was somewhat lonely, he supposed, but compared to the Fell’s company, solitude was downright delightful.

His wing would probably heal fine on its own, he tried to reassure himself. He had recovered from worse before. And after that…well, there was no point in going to look for Indigo Cloud, not even just to say goodbye. Jade and Pearl had been planning to move the court, so he probably wouldn’t be able to find them even if he looked. It wasn’t as if he was afraid of seeing them again, or as if he couldn’t bear their rejection. He had gotten over that sort of thing a long time ago, after being kicked out of so many groundling settlements. At least, that was what he was going to keep telling himself.

Standing still in the sun was making him sleepy. He turned around, searching the rocky area for a good spot to lie down, inconspicuous but still in the sun, when he caught sight of dark shapes moving above the treetops of the next hill over.

Instantly, he was wide awake. His first thought was that it was the Fell, and he started to panic and almost leapt into the air. But no, it couldn’t be Fell. The figures he was watching were too small to be kethel, and not the right shape for dakti or rulers. But the main giveaway was the colors. They were red and green and blue, not black like all Fell were. But they clearly weren’t birds or skylings. That could mean only one thing.

These were Raksura. For an idiotic moment, he hoped that they were from Indigo Cloud. But he knew the idea was stupid as soon as he thought it. Why would Indigo Cloud Raksura be all the way out here?

Taking another look, he realized that the amber one leading them was larger than the others, with more spines and a longer mane of frills running down her back. A queen, then. And there were no amber queens at Indigo Cloud. These Raksura must be from some foreign court.

With a sickening feeling, he realized that meeting them here could be a problem. Out here, with no one else to back him up, he looked like a solitary. And he had learned the hard way at Indigo Cloud that solitaries were not popular among Raksura. Even though a line-grandfather had brought him back, the attitudes toward him at Indigo Cloud had ranged from suspicion to hatred.

These foreign Raksura were unlikely to give him the benefit of the doubt. If they knew he was a solitary, chances were good they would kill him on the spot. It was a little too late to find a good hiding place, but if they hadn’t seen him yet and he shifted to groundling now, they might take him for a lost groundling and leave him alone.

It was now or never. Clenching his teeth, he shifted. Immediately, he staggered from the accumulated injuries transferring again back over to his groundling form. He clenched his fists in pain. Even if he shifted back to winged form now, he was certain he wouldn’t be able to fly. But if it kept these foreign Raksura from taking interest in him, it would be worth it.

He glanced up at the sky, checking whether they had seen him, only to find them veering in his direction.

This…might be very bad. But it was far too late to flee. Even if he hadn’t shifted down, there was no way he could have outflown them. Within his wing in the shape it was, even one of the warriors could have overtaken him easily, let alone the queen.

The group alighted on the rocky hilltop around ten paces away from him. From closer up, he could see that the amber queen at the front had silver webbing on her scales. There were four warriors with her, in varying shades of green, blue, and maroon.

The queen took a step towards him, and he reflexively backed away in response. Her expression was hard to read, and she was holding her spines under control, but Moon thought she seemed agitated. For a moment she said nothing. Then she flicked a spine at one of the warriors, the blue female.

The warrior looked somewhat unsure, but stepped next to the queen and spoke. “I am Tide, and this is Garnet,” she gestured to the queen standing beside her, “sister queen of Turquoise Lake.”

Moon stared at them silently, hoping they would give up and go away, while Tide looked more and more uncomfortable. Eventually, Garnet flicked another spine at her.

“Who are you?” Tide asked. “What colony are you from? Where is your queen?”

He knew it had been too much to hope they would mistake him for a groundling. Moon had been dreading this. Admitting he was a solitary could prove fatal. But at the same time, he couldn’t just say he was here with a group. The lie would be exposed immediately, since there were no other Raksura with him to back up his story.

“I’m Moon, from Indigo Cloud. I got lost, and I’m flying back to my court.” Maybe they hadn’t seen him clearly before he shifted down, and would assume he was some stupid warrior who had gotten separated from his group, and leave him to be on his way.

Garnet’s spines flickered, and the warriors twitched uncomfortably, though Moon couldn’t read the gesture. She seemed to hesitate, but then apparently decided to speak for herself instead of through Tide. “Consorts don’t just get lost.” Well, so much for Moon’s hope of it being easy. “Who is your queen? Where is she? How did you get separated from your colony?”

Why couldn’t she just mind her own business, Moon thought bitterly. But complaints would get him nowhere. He had to decide what to say, and fast. The truth was far too strange and complicated for him to trust these unknown Raksura to believe it. And even if they did…there was no guarantee that would leave him in a better position than he was right now. He decided the best method was to lie while staying as close to the truth as possible, but to avoid revealing any compromising details.

“My queen is Jade, sister queen of Indigo Cloud. Our colony was attacked by the Fell, and they took prisoners. I escaped, and am flying back.”

When he mentioned the Fell, all the others’ eyes went wide, even Garnet’s. If they were focused solely on the Fell, Moon thought, he might be able to get away with not mentioning anything else about himself. After all, if their colony was around here, they must be concerned about getting attacked too.

“The flight I escaped from is a bit over three days flying north of here,” he offered. “They had just attacked a groundling city there when I left. It had short yellow-roofed buildings that seemed to be built mostly underground. I’m not sure what it was called. I think the Fell were planning to stop there for a while, but you should still probably be on your guard.”

Garnet blinked, but the next moment she regained her composure. “Then, is your colony near there? Or was it…” Her voice trailed off.

It seemed changing the subject hadn’t worked. Too bad. Moon shook his head. “My colony is further east. I was going to fly south for a while to avoid running into the Fell again before turning towards it.”

“East? I didn’t know there were any colonies on the plains.”

She must mean the plains the Fell had crossed. “It’s further east than that,” he said.

Garnet frowned.

Did she doubt his story? Did she think he was making a colony up to pretend to backing he didn’t actually have? But Indigo Cloud _was_ a real colony. The only lie was that he was part of it. “It’s near Star Aster.”

Garnet’s spines twitched in surprise. “But that’s weeks away. How long were you with the Fell?”

Oh, this one was going to be hard to get out of. Moon glanced away uncomfortably.

“And why did the Fell take prisoners at all?” Tide asked suddenly. “Don’t they normally just…” her voice trailed off, perhaps realizing the question was insensitive.

“And,” put in one of the warriors, an older male with maroon scales, “why would they take _you_?”

Moon’s confusion at the warrior’s question must have been evident on his face. He wasn’t sure whether to be insulted or what. What was so bad about Moon that this warrior thought even the Fell wouldn’t want him?

“I mean,” said the warrior, rephrasing, “if your colony wasn’t destroyed, how did they let a _consort_ get captured?”

That…was a good point. If Moon told the truth, it would immediately reveal how little he was value by Indigo Cloud. That would lead directly to the question of why his position there was so low, and he didn’t want to be outed for a solitary if he could avoid it. Luckily, something quite close to the truth would still work here. “The Fell attacked the colony when the queens were away asking for assistance. Several of the Arbora were taken as well.”

“But why take any Raksura at all?” Tide asked again.

Telling them about the crossbreeds was just too dangerous. If they knew…about Ranea, and how worthless he was to any queen now, even his own, they might just kill him out of disgust. Moon bared his teeth. “Why do you think? To eat. They were traveling, and wanted snacks.”

Tide’s tail lashed. “Then, where are the Arbora?” she asked.

Moon opened his mouth to tell them they had escaped, but paused. That would lead to the question of why they had escaped and he had not, which was also too likely to reveal his lack of value to Indigo Cloud. “They…died.”

“Oh.” Tide’s expression turned serious, and she shifted her weight awkwardly. “I’m sorry.”

Moon realized she must have assumed he had hesitated to answer out of a reluctance to remember how the Fell had eaten them, rather than because he needed time to come up with better lies. That suited his purposes perfectly. He still couldn’t meet her eyes, though.

It seemed like a good time to end the discussion. “Then, if that’s all, I’ll be going now. I still have a long way back.” He waved his hand vaguely toward the east. He probably couldn’t shift right now, but he could at least start walking. He turned.

“Wait!” Garnet said.

Moon tensed and flinched, half expecting that she had seen through his lies and was about to leap at him. But when he looked back, she was just standing there, an expression of disbelieving confusion on her face.

Moon thought his expression was probably one of similar bafflement. “What is it? Do you want more details about the Fell flight?”

“You’re not...planning to just leave, and fly back to your court alone?” Garnet asked incredulously.

“Of course I am,” Moon said, trying keep his voice level and not snap at her. “How else am I supposed to get back?”

Garnet held her spines flat for a moment, her face expressionless. Eventually she said, “This has been a very unconventional meeting, so perhaps I have given you the wrong impression about us. We are not so barbaric as to leave a consort who escaped from the Fell stranded alone to fend for himself, even one from a foreign court we have never heard of.” She nodded to herself. “We’ll bring you back with us, and send word through our allied courts for your queen to come get you.”

Moon fought to keep his expression neutral. So this was where all his lies got him in the end. He had dug out his own burrow, and now he had to hide in it. Of course, Garnet would naturally think that this would be a good option for him, given all he had told her. She couldn’t know that getting back to Indigo Cloud wasn’t his real goal, or that the queens there probably would be less than pleased to get a message from some foreign court asking them to come pick up a solitary consort they wanted nothing more to do with.

But at the same time, he did need to stop for a rest until his wing healed. Even if Garnet’s court sent messages, they might never reach Indigo Cloud, especially if Pearl and Jade had moved the court like they were planning to. There would be plenty of opportunities in the meantime for Moon to sneak out of Turquoise Lake and disappear from the area, before his lies had the chance to catch up with him.

And even if Jade did get the message, Moon thought, would she be so callous as to claim not to know him, or to tell Turquoise Lake to get rid of him? After all, hadn’t he helped her defend her court? Hadn’t he helped the Arbora escape? Though the latter counted only if Jade had managed to find them, he thought to himself darkly. But if she had, then she had no reason to wish him harm. She might just send Turquoise Lake a polite response saying she didn’t want him, but he wasn’t a real solitary, so they should just let him go. Moon had no idea if Turquoise Lake would honor such a message…but the idea of hearing news about Indigo Cloud was still enticing, even if he knew he could never go back.

Now not only Garnet, but also all the warriors were staring at him in confusion, as if unsure whether or not to be offended by his hesitation.

“Is there something wrong, consort?” Garnet asked.

“No,” said Moon finally. “Thank you for the offer. I gratefully accept.” Now, all he had to do was keep his head down for a few days and not reveal how little he knew about Raksuran courts. The last thing he needed was for these people to find out was that he wasn’t a real consort.

Garnet nodded, her spines rippling in what Moon thought was relief, though why she would be relieved he wasn’t sure. “We’re heading back to Turquoise Lake after consulting with an allied court. We’re actually quite close now. The journey from here should only be two days or so.” She stepped towards him, and Moon resisted the urge to flinch.

Suddenly, Garnet stopped, and breathed in deeply, tasting the air.

Moon froze. He had forgotten entirely about the scent markers. If Jade had taken him, it would be fine since it fit with his story. But if Pearl had been telling the truth and she hadn’t…suddenly, a horrible thought occurred to him. What if _Ranea_ had taken him? She was half-queen, after all. Could she place the same sort of scent marker? Was that why he hadn’t been able to wash her scent off for days and days? A part of him remembered that only other queens should be able to smell the markers, not Moon, but it was crushed under the part of him that was suddenly plunged into horror.

“You aren’t taken?”

Garnet’s words jerked him abruptly out of his haze of terror. He blinked. So Ranea hadn’t taken him…but Jade hadn’t either. Pearl had been telling the truth after all. “She was going to, but when the Fell appeared near the colony, she decided to wait.” He knew it was a pathetic excuse even as he said it, but he couldn’t come up with anything better on the spot.

But surprisingly, Garnet seemed to accept his explanation without question, nodding her understanding. It seemed there was much Moon didn’t understand about Raksuran queens, and probably never would.

“We should get back to the colony as soon as possible, if there are Fell in the area,” Garnet said.

Moon agreed with that sentiment entirely.

The amber queen looked at him expectantly.

It took him a moment to realize what she was waiting for. He needed to shift, if he was going to fly with them. He had been planning to stop for a few days, and this sudden change of plans had taken him by surprise. Still, if there was a bath and food and somewhere to sleep without worrying about predators attacking him in the night waiting at the end of it, he thought he could endure for another few days.

He moved his right arm experimentally, wincing. Well, he would have to make do. He took a deep breath, set his teeth, and prepared to shift.

“Are you injured?”

Garnet had suddenly approached within a pace of him, and at her abrupt appearance and question, he leapt back in surprise.

Standing still had let the ache in his arm dull, but the sudden movement caused spikes of pain to shoot up his side.

“Are you hurt?” Garnet asked again.

Moon clenched his teeth to avoid hissing at her. “I injured my right arm and shoulder when I was escaping from the Fell. It’s fine. I can handle it.” Moon set his teeth and shifted.

Or rather, he tried to. Nothing happened, and instead he felt the constriction that meant something was stopping him from shifting. For a moment, he felt pure panic. Demus had survived, the Fell had found them, and they were all about to be captured by Ranea again!

“Stop trying to shift,” said Garnet. “Hold still, and I’ll look at your injury.”

Or, it could just be Garnet stopping him. His panic disappeared, but being unable to shift left him with a profound sense of unease. Garnet stepped close to him again and reached out to touch his shoulder.

As her claws brushed him, he felt a sense of dread wash over him. He knew she wasn’t trying to hurt him, really he did, but try as he might, he couldn’t help but feel as if it were Ranea there instead, her claws about to close around his neck. He thought he could even smell her wrongness-scent. He flinched away in reflex.

From a few paces away, he looked back at Garnet apprehensively. Was she offended?

She frowned slightly, but didn’t try to get any closer to him. “Tide, come here and look at his right arm,” she ordered instead.

The blue-scaled warrior walked over. When she was even with Garnet, she stopped and shifted to groundling. Her hair was reddish-orange, and her skin was a deep bronze.

As she stepped closer to Moon, he backed away another step. “I said my arm is fine. Just let me shift.”

Tide glanced at Garnet briefly. “I’m not going to hurt you, okay?” She held out her hands palm-up, like groundlings did when they wanted to show they weren’t carrying weapons. Only, her weapons were her hands, if she shifted, which she could do at any time.

Even so, Moon didn’t back away anymore. If he antagonized these people enough, they might just leave him here. Or they might kill him instead. He didn’t want to risk it. And the prospect of staying at a Raksuran colony again, even if only for a few days before he went back to wandering on his own, seemed more and more agreeable the more he thought about it.

When Tide touched his arm, pain shot up his side, and he winced. But unlike with Garnet, there was no oppressive sense of dread, no urge to flee. Maybe it was because Tide wasn’t a queen.

Carefully, Tide pulled back the right side of his shirt.

From where she stood several paces away, Garnet hissed, and Moon had to stop himself from flinching again. He looked at Tide instead. She was staring down at his arm and side, her brows drawn in concern. He followed her gaze.

So he had been right that flying had been making the injuries worse. He had looked when he stopped the previous day, and though the spot the pieces of the projectile had pierced the skin had scabbed over, he hadn’t been sure whether the bruising extending outward had been any better than on the first day. But now, though the scabbed areas no longer looked raw, the black and greenish patches on his bronze skin were darker and more extensive than before, stretching down all the way to his hip, and his shoulder and elbow were a shiny red tint with sections of significant swelling.

“Why would you shift down with these injuries?” Tide asked incredulously. “Actually, how could you even fly?”

Moon growled in response, before catching himself. The reasons why he had shifted to groundling when Garnet and her warriors appeared weren’t something he could explain without revealing the extent he had lied to them, so he just retorted with what came to mind. “I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t very well escape the Fell in groundling form, could I?”

Tide’s eyes widened for a moment in realization. “No wonder these injuries are so bad, if you got them in groundling form.” She bit her lip. “And then shifting would have just made them worse.”

Moon didn’t need Tide to tell him that.

The orange-haired warrior touched his shoulder gently with the tips of her fingers, but it still sent bolts of pain shooting along his arm and down his side, and he winced. She shook her head. “I don’t think there’s anything I can do for this here, we’ll need a mentor to look at it once we get back to the colony. And there’s no way you can shift right now, let alone fly.”

The pain and the anxiety were combining to put Moon in a very irritable mood. “I’ll manage,” he said sourly. “I’ve gotten this far, haven’t I?”

“She’s right,” said Garnet, without making any move to get closer. “You can’t fly on that. I…Tide will carry you.”

Moon started to hiss, but cut himself off when he remembered his resolution not to antagonize anyone right now.

Garnet frowned. “It will only be for a few days until we reach the colony. I don’t know what you’re thinking, but if you fly any more with those injuries, you may never be able to use the wing again.”

Moon didn’t really have a response to that. In fact, that was what he had been thinking himself, which was why he had been planning to stop for a few days and let the injuries heal before he continued, despite the risks.

“It’ll be fine, consort,” said Tide reassuringly. “I’ve carried injured warriors before. I’ll be very careful.”

Moon nodded reluctantly.

Tide shifted and picked him up, and they all took off.

His wing and side were still painful, on top of the usual discomforts of being carried in groundling form. But Tide was true to her word, and was careful not to hold Moon in a way that placed weight on his injuries, checking periodically to see if he was too cold or needed to stop. It was worlds away from being carried by Janeas, who wouldn’t even have cared whether Moon lived or died during the Fell’s long periods of flight if he hadn’t feared Ranea’s wrath.

They stopped that night on a rocky outcropping on the side of one of the larger hills. The trees clinging to the rocky slope loomed above them, their dark shapes covering the stars to the west, bisecting the dome of the night sky.

The two younger Turquoise Lake warriors were sent off to catch a few grasseaters, and the older male got a fire started. Without a firestarter, Moon hadn’t been able to make any fires even once he was away from the Fell.

The Turquoise Lake Raksura generously shared their grasseater and their blankets with Moon, and left him a place next to the fire. Despite the pain in his side, and despite being surrounded by strange Raksura, the warmth was so nice and he was so exhausted he fell asleep immediately.

He jerked awake from a dream of black wings arching over him, feeling cold sweat prickle on his skin. He blinked, and it took him a moment to remember where he was. He still lay beside where the fire had been, wrapped in a blanket that smelled like Tide. Besides the rustling of the wind through dried leaves, there was a low murmur of voices in the background. The pile of twigs and branches that had been blazing heartily when he fell asleep had burned down to embers.

Moon couldn’t recall exactly what he had been dreaming about, but something told him it wasn’t something he wanted to remember. He had had little opportunity to rest before while fleeing the Fell, and so had had mercifully few dreams.

Between the blanket and the remnants of the fire, he was still fairly warm and he didn’t want to move. It wasn’t day yet, so he closed his eyes to go back to sleep, when he realized he could make out the low voices of the Turquoise Lake Raksura talking on the other side of the outcropping, a few paces away and out of his line of sight. He thought about getting up and joining them, but something stopped him. It wasn’t that he was suspicious of them, exactly. If anything, they were the ones who had every reason to be suspicious of him. But without purposely choosing to, he found himself lying still and just listening.

“It’s too bad they couldn’t tell us more just from a general description,” Tide was saying.

“Yes, but not surprising,” came Garnet’s voice in response. “There’s so many different kinds of crop blights in this area, and even our mentors weren’t sure what it was.”

“At least they had some descriptions of similar blights in their library.” Moon recognized the voice as Scatter’s, the older maroon-scaled male warrior. “If we go back again with Arbora more familiar with our crops, or maybe a mentor, they might have more luck identifying it.”

Garnet growled in annoyance. “Sapphire isn’t going to be pleased.”

“Sapphire is just going to have to deal with it, then,” said Tide. “You did all you could.”

So, they had been traveling to another court to ask for advice about a crop blight. Moon hadn’t even thought to wonder about the fact they didn’t say why they were traveling, but now that he thought about it, they had been pretty careful not to mention anything about it in front of him. Probably it would make them look weak to other courts if the news got out, or something.

“If you have to go back to Peridot Light, can I come with you again?” asked another voice. This had to be the younger female warrior, Splash, Moon recalled. Her scales were green with an amber undersheen.

“We’ll see,” said Garnet. “Remember, you can’t mention this in front of other courts. Or in front of the Indigo Cloud consort, either. You too, Dive.” Dive was the other younger male warrior, the same shade of green as Splash but with a blue undersheen.

“Okay,” said Dive. “But, he didn’t even ask what we were doing at Peridot Light.”

“I think he probably had bigger worries on his mind,” Tide said dryly, “like escaping from the Fell. All the same, it’s best not to mention anything in front of him that you wouldn’t want getting back to his queen eventually. Indigo Cloud may be on the other side of the plains, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t have any connections with other courts we know.”

“Not like he’d talk to us even if we tried,” huffed Dive. “He’s so quiet and hostile. I’ve never met a consort like that.”

“Yes, it _is_ strange, isn’t it?” said Scatter suddenly.

“You mean the consort?” asked Tide.

“No, that the Fell would take hostages like that,” Scatter corrected.

“Why is that strange?” asked Dive. “Everyone knows the Fell eat Raksura too, like they eat groundlings.”

“I know _that_ ,” said Scatter dryly. “What I don’t understand is why they would keep a hostage alive for so long.”

“What do you mean?” asked Splash. Her voice sounded puzzled.

“Well, he must have been with them for weeks,” Scatter explained. “The Fell had surely found other groundling settlements to feed on by then. Why would they keep something as dangerous as a Raksura around if they had other, softer groundlings to eat?”

“You think he’s lying about being a hostage of the Fell?” asked Dive incredulously. “But then, what would he be doing out here alone? Is he a solitary?”

Moon felt his heart start to race.

“No, Dive, everyone knows consorts don’t go solitary,” Splash said, dismissing his idea offhandedly. “Actually,” she suggested, “I know he said his colony was on the other side of the plains, but maybe he was wrong. He never said how long he was with the Fell. Maybe it was only for a few days, and his colony is actually somewhere in the north.”

“No,” said Tide. “That can’t be it. Even if he’s wrong about the location of his colony, I’m sure he’s been with the Fell for more than a few days.”

“Why?” Splash sounded confused.

Tide sighed. “Did you not see how thin he was? Raksura don’t start to starve like that in just a few days. It takes weeks to get to that point.”

“Huh,” said Splash thoughtfully.

“But just because the Fell didn’t eat him doesn’t mean we should be so suspicious of him,” Tide added. “After all, who knows what the Fell are thinking.”

“It’s not just that,” said Scatter. “Something about him seems…off.”

Moon resisted the urge to hiss and forced himself to lay motionless. It was always like this with groundlings, too. Somehow, they could sense that his story wasn’t entirely true, even if they didn’t know exactly what he was lying about. He was going to need to keep his stay at Turquoise Lake as short as possible.

“I know what you mean,” said Garnet, to Moon’s surprise. She was the one who had invited him to come, in fact insisted on taking him along. Why had she done that, if she didn’t even trust him? “He’s just too…calm.”

“Calm?” said Tide in surprise. “He was too afraid to get within a pace of you, and you call that calm?”

“It’s understandable,” said Garnet after a pause. “He’s an untaken consort, and I’m an unknown queen. I don’t mean about me. I mean about the Fell in general. Most consorts I’ve ever known would have been asking for help in that situation, not giving me details about the Fell flight’s location and movements.”

Moon thought the conversation was getting all too close to the truth, but he wasn’t sure what he could do to change their minds about him. If he said something that accidentally revealed he was eavesdropping on them, it would only make them more suspicious.

“Yeah, he seemed like he didn’t want to come with us,” said Splash. “That’s kind of strange. You’d think he’d be glad to find other Raksura, especially when he couldn’t even fly.”

“Maybe you should have just left him, if he wanted to be alone so badly,” Dive suggested.

There was a slapping noise, and a yelp, which Moon realized after a moment was one of the others slapping the younger warrior in the head.

“No, Dive, we were not going to just leave him,” said Garnet pointedly. “What if his queen came looking for him? What would we tell her then? ‘Oh yes, we found your consort, he had escaped from the Fell and was wandering in the woods, half-starving and with a broken wing, and we left him to die.’ What would she think of us?”

“Oh.” Dive sounded chastened.

“She won’t be happy to hear that her Arbora are dead,” Tide said darkly.

Garnet huffed. “Well, she has only herself to blame. What were the queens there thinking, leaving their colony undefended like that?”

Moon wanted to jump up and defend Jade, but then he wouldn’t be able to hear the rest of the conversation.

“Maybe they don’t have many queens,” Scatter suggested. “From what the consort said, they sounded like a small colony. His queen could be the only sister queen. He could have meant that her and the reigning queen left to look for help, and left a daughter queen in charge who couldn’t handle the Fell attack.”

There was a moment of silence. “They don’t sound so different from us, then,” Garnet said. “I just keep thinking, if the Fell attacked us, and if Fog was captured…there’s no way he could fly three days on a broken wing.”

“But that consort isn’t Fog,” Tide said firmly. “We’ll warn Sapphire, Turquoise Lake will be fine, and Fog will never be in that position.”

Garnet growled assent. “I hope his queen realizes she’s damn lucky to get her consort back at all, after everything.”

Belatedly, Moon wondered whether Garnet had invited him to stay at Turquoise Lake while she looked for his court in the expectation that Indigo Cloud would owe them some favor for bringing him back. How disappointed would she be to realize Indigo Cloud didn’t even want him, and that all her effort was for nothing? He felt a guilty knot in his stomach. He was lying to these people, manipulating them. But it was no different than what he had done for turns and turns with groundlings. He was doing what he was necessary to survive, he told himself. If Garnet hadn’t wanted to be used, she should have just left him alone and minded her own business in the first place.

“Scatter’s right,” Tide said, “he is acting odd.” Moon tensed. Were they going to decide he was too big a risk, and try to kill him in his sleep? Was there anything he could do right now if they did? “But,” she continued, “what else did you expect? For him to act normal, after spending weeks as a prisoner of the Fell?”

“You’re saying he went mad?” Dive asked.

Tide sighed.

“Well, once we find his court, it’ll be his queen’s problem to deal with,” Garnet said, with an air of finality.

Apparently that meant the discussion was over, because all Moon heard after that was rustling as the others went off, presumably either to sleep or to their shift on watch.

Moon wondered if he would be able to get back to sleep knowing that these Raksura already doubted his story. But, at least it seemed they weren’t going to kill him immediately. It was still warm near the embers, though, and eventually, he drifted back to sleep.

Chapter 5

The next day they got up with the sun and set off. Tide carried him again. They stopped a couple of times, but only briefly. Garnet was clearly anxious to get back to her colony to warn them about the Fell.

It was almost evening and the sky was growing dark when Moon saw lights ahead. None of the other Raksura seemed surprised. He assumed then that this must be Turquoise Lake. He supposed they must be familiar with the territory and have known they were getting close for some time. As an outsider, Moon was the only one who still felt lost here.

The colony was built in a groundling ruin. The groundling structure had been made out of stone, perhaps in the shape of something close to a cube originally, but time and weathering had worn down the edges. Additional sections had been built along the sides from a lighter stone, and though more of these portions seemed to be crumbling, they looked less discolored than the central sections, as if they had been built at a later time. Vines were growing up the sides of the structure, and small clumps of trees stood on the roof. There were a few terraces on the eastern side with what looked like cultivated gardens, though there wasn’t enough light for him to make out what they were growing there. A few Arbora were still out tending them. A couple of warriors circled above the colony, and veered towards Garnet’s group when they appeared. Either this colony was very small, or they were mostly inside right now.

Garnet dropped down toward an archway halfway up the side of the structure. For the groundlings, either there must have been a stairway or walkway up to it once, or else it had been wholly decorative, because there was no way Moon could see to approach it from the ground.

Garnet lead them into a narrow passage, with a stone ceiling and walls and a dirt floor. Tide followed Garnet inside and landed, setting Moon down on his feet. After being carried for so long, his legs were stiff, and his shoulder throbbed. He swayed a little and put his left hand on the wall to steady himself. When he looked up, Tide had a hand half-extended as if waiting to catch him if he fell.

He scowled at her, then remembered he needed to be nice to these people. Besides, he really did have reason to be grateful to her, considering she had just carried him for two days. “Thank you,” he said.

Tide nodded. “It was no trouble, consort.” Apparently satisfied Moon wasn’t going to fall over, she shifted down herself and looked toward Garnet.

Garnet flicked a spine, and they all started down the passage.

They emerged into an entrance hall, about the same size as Indigo Cloud’s. Vines of the same sort as were growing on the outside climbed up the walls, stopping to root in hanging baskets along the way. To one side of the hall was a shallow pool, with more vines around it, these with pace-long blue flowers growing on them.

There were a few Arbora and Aeriat already there when they entered, and more were quickly coming in through the passages along the sides. Already, the space was starting to fill up. This court, Moon was starting to see, was in fact at least as big if not a bit bigger than Indigo Cloud. Everyone seemed anxious to hear what news Garnet had.

Though Garnet drew the most attention, Moon’s presence was far from passing unnoticed. It was like walking into Indigo Cloud all over again. Curious and not particularly friendly gazes stared at him from all directions. He wanted to turn around and flee out the passage they had come in. He might have tried it too, except that he couldn’t shift and there was no way down from the end of the passage besides flying.

The hall was more than halfway full when a dark blue shape came hurtling down from above. Arbora and warriors scattered to make space as the newcomer landed with a heavy thump, and straightened up.

This, Moon guessed immediately, was the reigning queen, Sapphire. Her scales were dark blue with a crimson undersheen, and she was at least half a head taller than Garnet. Like all Raksuran queens, she wore only jewelry, a necklace and bracelets of polished stones and a silver belt embedded with red gems. Her tail lashed impatiently behind her. Apparently, Moon thought, Pearl wasn’t the only other reigning queen who liked to make a dramatic entrance.

“Garnet, back finally, I see.” Her spines rippled.

Garnet inclined her head. “It took the Peridot Light mentors some time to search their archives.” Her voice sounded unperturbed, but a slight trembling of her spines gave away her annoyance at being blamed for the delay.

“And?”

“They found several possibilities for what it could be, and suggested we return with a sample.”

Before Sapphire could respond, an Arbora with light brown hair and skin pushed her way through the crowd and stepped up to the queens. Her hair was tied back and her sleeves rolled up as if she had just come from some sort of work. It was hard to tell with Raksura sometimes, but Moon thought she seemed older, which her confidence in front of the queens suggested as well.

“Garnet, did you not tell them it crumbles after only a day when uprooted?” the new Arbora asked, her brows creased in concern.

“I did, Image.” Garnet smoothed her spines as they started to rise. “They said there just aren’t enough details in the records to know without a sample.”

“But did you –,” Image’s eyes lit on Moon, and she broke off suddenly. “Who is this?”

“Just what I was about to ask you as well, Garnet,” said Sapphire, her voice very dry.

“Perhaps, we ought to discuss this…elsewhere,” said Garnet.

“That might be wise,” said Sapphire, flicking a spine ironically. The brown-haired Arbora, Image, shifted. Her scales were a pale yellow, almost gold, with a silver undersheen. She stepped up to Sapphire, who picked her up and leapt into the air. The warriors and Arbora who had crept closer around the dark-blue queen during the discussion scattered away from the wind of her wings. Garnet leapt after her.

Moon just had a chance to wonder if he was going to get left down here while they spoke, and what he was supposed to do in the meantime, when Tide tapped him on his left shoulder. “Excuse me, but Garnet will want you there as well, to explain things. Do you mind if I…?”

For a second Moon paused, unsure what she meant. But then he realized that she was asking for permission to carry him up. Now that he thought about it, he couldn’t think of a time Tide _hadn’t_ asked first before carrying him. He didn’t see why it should make such a difference to him…but somehow it did. Janeas had never asked permission, of course. Maybe that was why it didn’t bother him as much when Tide carried him, because he didn’t feel like a prisoner.

Still, Moon hesitated. Though he didn’t mind Tide carrying him, he didn’t really want to face any more queens right now. Even traveling with Garnet had been uncomfortable enough, much less having to deal with an older, more powerful reigning queen. But he couldn’t just brush these people off. They were helping him, and he owed them for that, at least enough to give them what details he knew about the Fell threat.

Moon bit his lip and nodded his assent to Tide.

Tide shifted and picked him up again, still careful about his injured arm, and pushed off into the air of the central well. A few flaps carried her up to a dark opening the queens had went through. On the other side was what Moon thought was probably the queens’ greeting hall. There were warming stones in an indentation in the floor, and a pot of water over the stones was not yet boiling, as if someone had just put it on. Garnet and Sapphire were just settling down around the hearth, with Image back in her groundling form between them. Tide motioned him to a spot several paces back and to the side. He wondered if this was according to protocol, or if there even was protocol for this situation. Either way, he was just as happy to stay as far as possible from the queens.

“So,” said Sapphire, as soon as they had settled. “I send you off on a simple errand, and instead of completing it, you wander off to who-knows-where and pick up another consort. Fog will be disappointed.”

“He’s not my consort!” Garnet hissed.

Sapphire raised her eyebrows. “So you _stole_ him?”

“Of course not!” Garnet rippled her spines, a gesture Moon recognized from Jade as the equivalent of rolling her eyes. Moon had been startled by Sapphire’s hostility at first, but now he was starting to think it was just her giving the other queen a hard time, and she didn’t actually expect Garnet of any wrongdoing. “This is –”

Just then, her head snapped around. Moon followed her gaze to the back of the room, where a man had just appeared through one of the passages. He was tall and slender like an Aeriat, with dark hair and bronze skin. His clothes were of a rich black fabric, and he wore several bracelets and a belt with an intricate blue inlay.

He met Garnet’s eyes, then ran his gaze over the others in the room. At Moon, he stopped for a long moment. His glance was curious, but not hostile. After a moment, he started walking again and came to sit behind Garnet. She stretched out a hand and touched his wrist. This had to be Garnet’s consort. He looked at Moon deliberately, then back at her questioningly.

Garnet huffed in annoyance, and turned back to address the room. Moon thought he heard her mutter something under her breath about them having no faith in her, but he was too far away to hear. “This is Moon,” she said pointedly, “consort to Jade, sister queen of Indigo Cloud.”

Garnet’s consort blinked.

“Indigo Cloud?” Image asked, glancing at Sapphire, who shrugged her spines and looked back at Garnet.

“It’s on the other side of the plains,” Garnet explained. “We found Moon on the way back from Peridot Light. He says his court was attacked by the Fell, and he and some Arbora were taken as hostages. A few days ago he managed to escape, when the flight stopped to attack Carien.”

Image and the consort looked at Moon, appalled.

Sapphire’s tail twitched in surprise, but other than that, she didn’t visibly react. “Carien is destroyed, then?”

Garnet glanced toward Moon.

Did that mean he was supposed to answer? Well, he needed to give them more details anyways. He had spent the past couple of days thinking about what information they ought to know to defend themselves, and how to pass it along without revealing too much about himself. “Probably. I didn’t see much of the battle, and since most of the city is underground I couldn’t tell how far the damage extended, but a lot of the above-ground portion was burned or collapsed. Some of the inhabitants had been taken hostage. Not everyone though, since some of them ambushed the Fell with a projectile weapon. I managed to escape when the Fell were distracted with the fighting. The groundlings didn’t seem to be winning when I left, though.”

Sapphire and Image looked at him in surprise. Maybe Sapphire’s question hadn’t been put to him then, after all. He winced internally. How long could he actually manage to pretend to be a real consort, when he didn’t know any of the etiquette?

“It was a very large flight, then?” Sapphire asked. Apparently she had decided that she wasn’t bothered by Moon’s lack of manners, at least not when it came to learning about a Fell threat to her colony.

“It was at first. After they attacked Indigo Cloud, we killed many of them. When I left, they still had three kethel and two progenitors.” Though calling Ranea a progenitor wasn’t strictly true, he didn’t want to mention the crossbreeds. “And three rulers, though I think one of them was killed by the groundlings. And maybe one of the kethel as well, though it might have just been injured.”

Sapphire frowned. “That’s not too many, then. We can handle that much easily.”

Moon hesitated. The main issue he had encountered in deciding what to tell the Turquoise Lake queens, was how to warn them about the mentor-dakti, in case Demus had survived. Moon hoped it was dead, but he couldn’t be sure. At the same time, he really wanted to avoid mentioning the crossbreeds if at all possible. During the long hours while Tide was carrying him though, he had come up with a solution. “There’s something else. The Fell had a weapon that could stop Raksura from shifting.”

All the others looked surprised, and Image and Tide looked outright alarmed.

The blue queen’s spines flared. “This weapon, they still have it? Do you know how it works? How many can it stop from shifting?”

Moon swallowed. “The Arbora said they thought it was some sort of groundling magic weapon. It can extend across an area of over a hundred paces, affecting only Raksura and not Fell. And it’s powerful. It can not only stop queens from shifting, it can force them into Arbora form.” Garnet and Sapphire looked alarmed at that. “I’m not sure they still have it, though,” Moon added.

“What do you mean?” asked Garnet.

“They had two originally. Indigo Cloud managed to destroy one, and the other might have been destroyed as well when the Carien groundlings were shooting at the kethel that was carrying it. I couldn’t see it very well though, so I’m not too sure.”

Shocked silence filled the room for a moment.

“Well,” said Sapphire finally, “that explains why the flight was able to take on a full Raksuran court.” Her gaze fixed back on Moon. “But why did they take hostages? And what happened to the Arbora who were captured with you?”

Garnet and Tide winced.

Moon, though, had been expecting these questions, and of course wasn’t about to change his story now. “The Fell wanted something to eat along the way. And the Arbora…didn’t make it.”

“Ah,” said Sapphire. “I’m sorry.”

Garnet flicked her tail. “I told Moon we would send messages through the other courts, to contact his queen to come get him.”

Sapphire nodded. “Of course. We’ll have to increase patrols around the colony, and send out groups to warn the nearby colonies as well.”

From what Sapphire was saying, it sounded like there were a lot of colonies in the area. With so many Raksura around, could he manage to make it away without being noticed? Somehow, he had to leave before news reached back here that Indigo Cloud didn’t want him.

Although the message might never reach Indigo Cloud in the first place, if Pearl and Jade had already moved the colony like they had been planning. If he could know no return message were coming, he could stay here as long as this court would have him. Unless, some other colony closer to Indigo Cloud knew about their plans to move. If one did and sent word back to Turquoise Lake, it would look very suspicious that Moon hadn’t thought to mention that particular detail. Moon twitched uncomfortably.

“Is there something else?”

Sapphire’s voice cut through his thoughts, and he looked up to find her staring at him. Moon decided that not mentioning that Indigo Cloud was moving their colony was too big a risk, but maybe he could talk Sapphire out of trying to contact Indigo Cloud at all. “Well, you might not be able to find Indigo Cloud. The queens were planning to move the colony when they were attacked. When the Fell left, they probably took the opportunity to leave. They’ll be hard to find. It would probably be easier for me to just go look for them myself.”

Sapphire paused for a moment. “Do you know where they were moving to?”

Moon shrugged, and twitched again involuntarily. Being in a room with two queens, even though he was a good ten paces away from them, was starting to become uncomfortable. “I’m not sure exactly. They said it was in the Reaches.”

“Ah,” said Sapphire. “Then, they’ll have to pass by the plains.” She narrowed her eyes, and her tail flicked thoughtfully. “If they’re avoiding the Fell, they’ll probably choose to take the southern route. We have many allied courts in that direction. We can pass a message to the other courts in that area, to be on the lookout for large groups of Raksura passing through, and to pass our message to Indigo Cloud should they encounter them.” Sapphire tapped a claw against her knee. “How long it will take for Indigo Cloud to reach here, though, depends on how they’re traveling.” Her eyes lit back on Moon. “Do they have enough warriors to carry their Arbora and supplies? Or will they be walking? Do you know?”

Moon wasn’t sure if they had even moved yet, actually. But he might as well answer. “They had a groundling flying boat they were planning to use to take the Arbora and supplies.”

Sapphire blinked. “Well, this sounds like a very interesting court. Is the flying boat fast?”

“Not particularly.”

“Then, we won’t miss them. Don’t worry.”

Missing them was exactly the opposite of what Moon was worried about. But he couldn’t very well tell her that. Sapphire’s gaze on him was starting to become very unpleasant, though he knew she didn’t mean him any harm. He wrapped his arms around himself, and flinched when it pulled at his shoulder.

“What’s wrong?” said Sapphire. When he looked up, she was frowning at him.

“Oh!” said Garnet. “I’m so sorry, Moon. Your shoulder must hurt after traveling so long. I was planning to find a mentor right away, but then I got distracted talking about the Fell!”

Moon shook his head. “It’s fine. The issue with the Fell is more important anyways.”

Image got to her feet, brushing off her pants, and crossed around the hearth toward Moon. “Here, Moon, I’m a mentor. Let me see.”

Moon didn’t stop her when she pulled back the right side of his shirt. When she saw the bruising and swelling, she bit her lip. “How did this happen?”

“When the groundlings in the city were shooting at the Fell, one of the projectiles clipped me.”

Image started to nod, but then stopped. “But how did you escape, then?”

“I flew,” said Moon, trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice. As if consorts couldn’t fly just the same as any other Raksura.

“But not on injuries like this, surely,” said Image, frowning.

Moon started to shrug, but stopped when it pulled at his shoulder again. “Well, it maybe wasn’t this bad originally. After I shifted a few times and flew on it for a few days it seemed to get worse.”

Image opened her mouth to speak, and then closed it. “I see,” she said finally. “Well, this isn’t so bad it needs a healing sleep, but I’ll definitely need to make some simples for this. Why don’t you come down to the mentors’ hall with me.”

Moon nodded, and got up to follow her.

Image turned to Garnet. “About what you found at Peridot Light –”

“We can discuss it later,” said Garnet.

Image nodded and left, glancing back to make sure Moon was following her.

The passage down to the mentors’ hall was long but not particularly steep, and there weren’t any sections that required climbing. This was good, because Moon wasn’t sure he could have managed it.

Image took him through the common area, where a couple younger-looking Arbora were reading. They got up when Image and Moon appeared. They seemed like they wanted to ask about the Garnet’s mission and the strange consort Image had with her, but Image shooed them off, promising to tell them everything later. She led Moon into a smaller room lit with a couple of spelled stones in the walls. Other than that, the room was filled with herbs. A stack of half-chopped stalks lay on a board to the side. Moon wondered if that was what Image had been working on when Garnet arrived.

She had him sit on a stool and looked at the injuries more carefully. It took effort not to hiss at her when she touched sore spots. He knew she was being careful and trying to help him, but he was tired and his arm and side throbbed and he felt stressed from talking with the queens. It was still a hundred times better than being captured by the Fell, he reminded himself. And at least he wouldn’t be waiting out in the woods where anything could come by and eat him while his injuries healed.

“It isn’t as bad as I thought,” Image said at last.

What was that supposed to mean, thought Moon, scowling.

“I was worried you might not be able to use the wing again, or that there would be permanent damage, but I think with some time it will heal completely.”

Moon just nodded.

“It will take me a bit to come up with the right simples, since I’ll need to make something more powerful. In the meantime, I’ll make you something for the pain.”

Moon shook his head. “I’m fine. I can handle it.”

“Oh, it’s no trouble,” said Image, turning away to look consideringly at a couple of bundles of herbs on a table off to the side.

Moon didn’t answer. He was too tired to bother. He leaned against the wall on his good side, trying not to think about the throbbing in his shoulder. Unfortunately, he found himself thinking about Jade instead. Was she alright? What if the kethel had killed her? No, he told himself, Jade wouldn’t lose, even to a kethel. But had she found the Arbora? And the fledglings?

He was still worrying about it, when he felt someone tapping him on the left shoulder, and he started, then winced.

“Moon?” said Image, crouching down to look into his face. “Are you alright?”

“Sorry. I was just thinking.”

Image nodded, putting a cup into his hands filled with some warm liquid. “Here, drink this.”

He frowned.

Image looked a little sad. “I made it for you.”

He didn’t want to offend this woman, especially since she was the one he was depending on to heal his wing so he could leave. He nodded. “Thanks.” When he drank it, it was bitter, but warm.

Image pulled him up by his good arm and guided him over to a pile of blankets in the corner. “Here, I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Moon sat down, too tired to get up again but too tense to sleep. His thoughts were just starting to circle back to Jade, when he suddenly noticed that the pain that had been his constant companion for days was slowly receding. The relief was enormous, like a great weight he had been carrying all this time without realizing it had suddenly fallen from his shoulders. Like when he had been a hostage of the Fell, he only realized how much stress it had been causing him once it was gone. Without the pain to keep him awake, he soon stopped thinking about anything and fell asleep.

He woke up later, his vision hazy with sleep and and the dimness in the room, to Image gently turning him onto his back.

“What –?” he started to ask. His tongue felt heavy in his mouth.

“It’s alright, I need to put this on your arm, just go back to sleep,” said Image. Her light brown hair and skin seemed to blur together in the darkness as if she were a shadow, featureless. Moon felt something cool on his shoulder and side.

He thought of turning his head to look, but before he could he was already falling back asleep.

Moon opened his eyes, wondering where he was and why it was so warm. All that he could see from where he was lying were shelves and shelves of herbs. For a moment, he was confused to why he was in an herb storage room, but then he remembered arriving at Turquoise Lake and meeting Image. Thinking back, Moon thought he may have woken up several more times before this, but the memories were blurred.

Moon sat up. His right arm twinged with the movement, but it was nothing close to the spikes of pain that would have come before. He looked at the skin, and saw that while it wasn’t nearly fully healed, the bruising was definitely receding and the swelling had gone down. Whatever Image had done was definitely working.

He wondered how long he had been sleeping, and what the queens here might have been doing in the meantime. At least he hadn’t been kicked out yet. He got to his feet and made his way across to the entrance, carefully not touching any of Image’s piles of dried or sliced herbs.

He stepped out into the common area. There were several Raksura in groundling form talking there. A quick glace was enough to show that none of them were Image. Most were Arbora, but one had the taller and more slender figure of an Aeriat. Looking closer, Moon realized this was the consort he had seen earlier in the queen’s hall.

Garent’s consort looked up and saw him. “Oh, hello, Moon. You’re up.” He smiled. “Come sit with us and have something to eat.”

Moon paused, wondering whether there was some trick or if this consort resented him for traveling with his queen, but the consort didn’t really look hostile, and where else was Moon going to go in this foreign colony? And besides, when he thought about it, he really was hungry.

“I’m Fog, Garnet’s consort,” the consort introduced himself. “These are Pounce and Turn. They’re mentors.” He gestured to the two Arbora.

Moon nodded cautiously, sitting down on some cushions a few paces from Fog.

“Here,” said Fog, pushing a plate of roots and other things towards him. “You’ve been asleep for two days. How is your arm?”

“Better, thanks,” said Moon. “I should thank Image.”

“She went to speak to Garnet,” said Fog. “She’ll be back soon.”

The two younger mentors kept glancing at him. They didn’t seem exactly comfortable around him, but at least they weren’t openly hostile either. Moon thought they were okay with him here, unlike the Raksura at Indigo Cloud, firstly because they didn’t know he was a solitary, but also because they knew he was only here as a guest. They only had to tolerate him for a few weeks before he would be gone.

Eventually he had to ask. Fog would probably know. “Do you know if the queens here sent a message to Indigo Cloud yet?”

“Yes, the same day you arrived. They had to hurry to warn the surrounding courts about the Fell as well. Don’t worry, if your court travels through, they won’t be missed,” Fog said reassuringly.

Moon hid his unease by taking a bite of root.

Eventually, Image came back. She said Moon’s arm was healing well, but it would be several days before he ought to try to shift again, and to avoid using the arm for anything in the meantime. Moon was just glad it wasn’t going to leave permanent damage. That would have put a damper on, well, the rest of his life. Even if he couldn’t fly, groundlings wouldn’t stop mistaking him for a Fell, and he didn’t much fancy trying to flee groundling settlements on foot. Hopefully, his wing would be healed and he would be gone well before the message to Indigo Cloud even reached them.

Fog offered for Moon to come sleep in the consorts’ bowers that night. The mentors here didn’t seem entirely comfortable with him, so he accepted, not that he expected the consorts to be more pleased to be around a stranger, but at least Fog was alright.

Fog introduced him to the younger consorts, some who were taken by the daughter queens, and some which were from Garnet’s or Sapphire’s bloodlines. Sapphire’s consort stopped in only briefly, but seemed to spend most of his time in the queens’ level.

The other consorts, luckily, taking Fog’s lead, were more curious about Moon than wary of him. Moon tried as much as possible not to hiss at them.

Fog lent Moon an unoccupied bower to sleep in. It was hard to get to sleep, though, thinking about all the problems he was going to have to face in the morning.

Moon thought he had done a fairly good job fitting in, all things considered. He wasn’t managing to act perfectly like a real consort, he knew, but these people were cutting him a lot of slack for his story about being captured by the Fell. Not that that part was actually a lie. How would a real consort react to having been a prisoner of the Fell? And how would they have reacted to Ranea? Moon felt certain they would be acting differently than he was somehow, but he wasn’t sure precisely how.

Eventually he did fall asleep.

_“You’re mine,” rasped Ranea in his ear, her clawed hand pulling his head back and her teeth digging into his neck, sharp pinpricks of pain. He couldn’t shift. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t flee. Her dark wings blocked his vision and her scent filled his nostrils. There was no escape._

He woke up screaming. Immediately, he realized Ranea’s scent was gone and nothing was trapping him, that it was just a dream. He stopped screaming, curling up and trying to get his breathing under control. He was in a bower in Turquoise Lake, and the Fell were far away, he reminded himself. He was fine. Completely fine.

Still, when a dark figure appeared suddenly in the doorway, he flinched.

“Moon?” it called softly.

It was Fog.

“Moon, are you alright?”

“Yes,” said Moon. “Sorry about that. If I woke you up.”

“It’s fine,” said Fog. “The others probably didn’t hear you, since their bowers are on the other side.”

“Sorry,” said Moon again.

“You don’t have to be sorry. Are you alright?”

“I’m fine, you should go back to sleep.”

Fog was silent for a moment, but instead of leaving, he came inside and sat down next to Moon. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

“Not really.”

Fog just nodded.

He smelled like Raksura. Not familiar Raksura like those of Indigo Cloud, but not anything like Fell either. It was somehow…comforting.

Moon yawned.

“Let’s go back to sleep,” said Fog.

That Fog seemed to intend to stay here surprised Moon. He thought about telling him to go back to his own bower…but he didn’t really want him to. In the end, they both curled up on Moon’s blankets, back to back. Fog’s breathing was even, and he was warm beside him.

Moon woke up several more times during the night. Sometimes he wasn’t sure whether he had woken Fog or not, sometimes he woke up screaming to Fog stroking his hair. After the second time it happened, he told the other consort he should leave so he could get some sleep, but Fog said he was fine and stayed. And Moon was glad. He didn’t really want to be alone anymore. Maybe it would be better the next night.

The next day, Moon spent his time in the colony not doing a lot of anything. It wasn’t his court, he didn’t really have a job here, and the consorts here didn’t seem to do a lot anyways besides hang around in the consort bowers, or go visit the queens or the nurseries. Moon sort of wanted to go out and hunt, but Image had checked his wing and said he still wasn’t ready to shift, and he didn’t want to risk making the injuries any worse. He needed to be able to fly long distances as soon as possible, and also he didn’t want to anger Image by ruining her hard work.

He didn’t want to wander around in the colony either, since he might accidentally run into one of the queens. So he spent the whole day on the consorts’ level, watching the others come and go.

That night he was sitting in one of the gathering areas where the consorts’ bowers were, looking at a book that was mostly pictures that one of the younger consorts had brought from the teachers’ library and listening to the other consorts talk. One by one though, they all went off to sleep, some together, a couple in the direction of the queens’ halls. Eventually, Moon was alone. He considered going off to sleep in the bower he was staying in, but he had spent all day trying not to think about things. He just knew if he closed his eyes he would see them again, Ranea and Janeas, and he didn’t want to think about them, even in his dreams.

Sitting here all night was only going to make him more tired, he knew, but he couldn’t bring himself to get up and go to bed. At least, the longer he sat here, the less time he would have to dream.

A clatter of claws at the entrance to the hall startled him so badly he almost knocked the book on the ground.

Fog and Image came through the entrance, shifting down as they entered.

“Ah, hello, Moon,” said Fog. “I thought I might find you here.” He glanced at Moon’s book shoved off to the side, and his posture interrupted halfway into leaping into a crouch. “Sorry if we startled you.”

“Not at all.” Moon picked the book back up. “I just thought you had gone to sleep.”

“I will soon. You should come to sleep as well.”

“I’m not really tired. I think I’ll stay here a little bit longer.”

Fog nodded and sat down on one of the cushions near the hearth in the center, as if he were going to stay up longer as well. Well, it was none of Moon’s business. Fog could do what he pleased.

Moon wondered what Image was doing there, though. Not that he thought mentors _couldn’t_ come to the consorts’ bowers. After all, in his experience, consorts seemed to hang out in the mentors’ hall all the time. Though Indigo Cloud maybe wasn’t the best example.

Image reached out to the warming stones in the center, as if making sure they were hot enough, then put on water like she was about to make tea.

_At this time of night?_ thought Moon. But in the end, he really couldn’t bring himself to care, and went back to glancing through the book. His thoughts kept drifting though, since he was tired, but when he started to nod off, he would think of black scales and spined crests and start awake again.

He was awoken from another doze by Fog’s hand on his shoulder. “Moon, you should come to sleep now.”

“No, I’m fine,” said Moon, blinking to try to shake of the drowsiness.

“It’ll be fine,” said Fog opaquely. “Here, drink this.” He held out a ceramic cup to Moon of some dark liquid, steam coming off its surface.

He glanced around. Behind Fog, Image had apparently finished making tea, since she was packing away her kettle and tea leaves. Though those didn’t look like tea leaves at all, now he took a closer look. He glanced back at the cup suspiciously. What had she been making?

She noticed him watching her, and set her pack aside and came over. “It’s just a simple for sleeping,” she explained. “It causes a sleep without dreams.”

Oh. So he really must have woken up Fog quite a bit last night. Moon shifted uncomfortably.

Fog put the cup in Moon’s hands and waited expectantly.

Moon suppressed the urge to sigh. He didn’t need it, he thought. Even if he did use this to get away from his thoughts, he would have to deal with them eventually, at the very least when he left the colony and didn’t have a mentor to make sleeping simples for him anymore. But with Fog and Image standing there, he couldn’t easily refuse it. And he didn’t really want to, either. He was so tired. Just one night wouldn’t hurt.

Its taste was bitter, too sharp to ever be mistaken for tea, but it wasn’t as bad as some simples he had drunk.

Image went to get her pack as Fog pulled him into his bower with him. Moon had already been tired, and the effort of keeping his eyes open seemed to be increasing by the minute.

He fell asleep immediately, and didn’t wake up again until the morning, light and the murmur of voices drifting into the bower.

It was five days later when Fog came into the consorts’ hall, walking directly over to Moon. Moon and a couple of Arbora had been sorting some beads the Arbora had bought off a trader some months ago but hadn’t needed and were planning to trade again next time they had the chance. Moon was sorting them based on how far away they had come from and how rare they were, to give the Arbora some idea of their worth so they wouldn’t be tricked by the next trader who came along. He had explained away his expertise with groundling trade by telling them there was a well-traveled line-grandfather at Indigo Cloud, who had often spoken about his experiences.

The other Raksura at Turquoise Lake had mostly warmed up to him, now he wasn’t hissing at them every other second. It helped that he wasn’t constantly exhausted. Image had continued to make him the sleeping simple, and despite his better judgment, he had kept using it. There would be a price to pay when he finally left the colony and had to face everything, but he would deal with that later.

“What’s up?” Moon asked, looking up. He did a double-take at the serious expression on Fog’s face. “What’s wrong? Did they find the Fell?”

Fog shook his head. “No, nothing like that. It’s good news…maybe. Some warriors from Peridot Light came bringing a message from your court. Apparently Indigo Cloud passed by their territory while moving their court. Sapphire thought you would want to hear.”

Moon blinked in shocked surprise. They had found Indigo Cloud already? His first thought was that he had been counting on it taking longer, and on having more time here to recover. But that wasn’t entirely true. In reality, his wing was mostly healed, and he should have already left. The truth was, he had become so comfortable staying at Turquoise Lake, he had let his real goal slip from his mind.

“Do you want to come?” Fog asked again, when Moon didn’t answer immediately.

Moon did want to hear what news the warriors had brought. But the warriors would be meeting with the queens in the queens’ greeting hall…and that meant there would be queens there. He really didn’t want to talk to any queens, or come within a hundred paces of them, or really even be in the same colony as them. Though that last couldn’t be helped.

Fog noticed his reluctance. “If you don’t want to, that’s fine, I can come tell you about it when it’s over.”

Moon shook his head and stood up, straightening his clothes. “No, I’ll come.” He needed to be there to hear whatever the news was.

The passage they took to reach the queen’s greeting hall twisted through the stone structure. Vines of the same sort as lined the walls in the entry hall, with hand-width blue flowers, climbed the sides and arched over the ceiling.

They came out in the back of the greeting hall. Five warriors were sitting across from Sapphire and Garnet and a few older Turquoise Lake Arbora, including Ivory. Sapphire’s consort was already sitting behind her. Fog went to take his place behind Garnet. Moon hesitated, then went and sat near Ivory. He wasn’t sure where he really ought to sit in this situation, so rather than try to guess about a protocol that possibly didn’t even exist, he thought it was better to just find somewhere mostly out of the way. Also, it helped that Sapphire was sitting towards the edge of the room, on the opposite side from where the queens were. Everyone was in groundling form except the queens.

Once everyone was seated, Sapphire flicked a spine. “So,” she said, facing the warrior. “You have news?”

“Yes,” said the warrior sitting across from her, an older woman with dark reddish hair and auburn skin. “Some warriors were spotted passing near our colony. After speaking with them, we learned they were from Indigo Cloud. Since they said the rest of their colony was traveling nearby and they had been sent out to scout, we passed along the message about their missing consort and the location of your court. The next day they returned,” the warrior frowned, “requesting us to pass a message back to you.”

Sapphire’s spines half-flared, and the Arbora shifted uncomfortably. “They didn’t send anyone with you?”

Ah, Moon understood now. They were expecting Indigo Cloud to want him back, so they thought “his” colony would send someone to pick him up. This response had been well within Moon’s expectations though. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Fog shooting him concerned glances, but he forced himself not to look back. This was it, then. Indigo Cloud would say they didn’t want him, and then Turquoise Lake would decide what they were going to do with him. If he was lucky, he would only be thrown out. If he weren’t so lucky…well, he just had to hope it wouldn’t come to that. He itched to shift, before the queens thought to stop him, but he knew that would just make things worse.

“No,” said the warrior, shaking her head in response to Sapphire’s question.

“What was the message they wanted you to take us?” Garnet asked, leaning forward.

“Indigo Cloud’s reigning queen, Pearl, sends her greetings, and says that since her sister queen is away from the colony, she is unable to send anyone to pick up the consort.”

There was a moment of silence.

Sapphire’s spines rippled. “Was that all?”

“Yes.” The warrior’s voice was tense.

All the Raksura in the room were now shooting glances at Moon. He rolled his shoulders, trying to settle spines he didn’t have. Image reached out a hand and patted his wrist.

Moon had honestly not been expecting that response, and wasn’t sure what to make of it. Jade wasn’t with the rest of the colony, was what Pearl seemed to be saying. But where else would she be? She couldn’t be…dead, could she? Had the kethel killed her? But no, that was impossible. Jade was too strong to be killed by a Fell, even a kethel, especially not with her warriors backing her up. And anyways, Pearl wouldn’t have said Jade was away from the colony if she was dead. It was still a really strange way of wording it, though. It wouldn’t just mean she had gone scouting. It had to mean something else.

It might, Moon thought with a sinking feeling, just mean Jade didn’t want to talk to him or deal with his problems. He had really been expecting the Indigo Cloud queens to defend him, he realized. Even if they didn’t want him back, he had thought they would at least tell this colony he wasn’t a real solitary. But instead Pearl had sent this cryptic message. What could she be thinking?

“That’s not very informative,” Garnet grumbled.

“We’re only passing along the message,” the warrior answered curtly.

“Well, thank you for your assistance in this matter,” said Sapphire finally, though the lash her tail made when she said it indicated she was not quite so grateful as her words suggested. “Please stay and rest from your journey. The Arbora will take you to our guest bowers.”

“Thank you,” said the leading warrior, and they got up to go.

“Well,” said Sapphire, when they were gone. She turned to Moon and looked directly at him, and he twitched and dropped his eyes. He wanted to shift and fly away, but thought that probably wouldn’t be looked upon kindly at the moment. At least he could shift now that his arm had healed enough. He had tried the other day, and his wing was a bit stiff but still workable.

“What exactly was that message?”

Sapphire was asking Moon as if he knew. “I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “Pearl is kind of…I never know what she’s thinking.”

When Moon glanced up at her, Sapphire was frowning. “Your queen is this sister queen she’s referring to, then?”

Moon nodded.

“Why wouldn’t she be with her colony?”

Moon shook his head again. “I don’t know.”

“Maybe we should take a moment to clear our heads, and talk about this later,” said Image from beside him. He looked up in time to see her exchange a significant glance with Garnet.

Oh, great. So now they wanted to talk about it without him here. Well, it wasn’t like there was anything he could do about it, and it was hardly a surprise they didn’t trust him after receiving a message like that.

Fog got up and came over to Moon, taking his arm and pulling him up. “We’ll be back at the consort bowers if you need us.” He tugged Moon back into the passage through which they had entered.

After several twists of the passage, when they were out of earshot of the greeting hall, Fog stopped and turned to Moon.

“I’m sure your queen is fine,” he said concernedly. “Moving a colony is bound to be hard, there’s lots of things she might have to do, and I’m sure she’ll come get you as soon as she can.”

Moon looked at Fog’s face, but couldn’t detect any trace of lying or suspicion there, only concern. As far as Moon could tell, Fog really believed that Moon didn’t know what was going on with his colony, that he was worried about his queen.

Of course, Moon _was_ worried about Jade. But he had been lying when he said he had no idea why they had responded that way. He was relieved that Fog hadn’t guessed that he was a solitary, but at the same time, that just made him feel more guilty about deceiving him. He’d never felt this way about deceiving groundlings.

“I’m not…it’s fine,” said Moon.

Fog patted his shoulder. “It’ll be alright.”

Moon wondered about that. He didn’t think the queens were as likely to be so trusting of him and his story as Fog was after this development.

Despite his concerns, though, for the rest of the day no warriors or queens came to find him in the consort bowers to drag him away either to be killed or thrown out of the colony. He passed the day in the consorts’ hall like normal.

Still, he felt a tension in the others when he was around them. Maybe it had always been there, and he just hadn’t noticed it before. This wasn’t a good place for him to stay anymore.

He retreated to an inconspicuous corner of the consorts’ hall and watched a pair of the younger consorts practice making different teas.

In fact, stopping here had probably been a mistake. He was imposing on these people under false pretenses, making them send pointless messages on his behalf that they stood to gain nothing from. Something inside him wanted to wait for them to hear back from Indigo Cloud, so he could know how they were all doing. Was Jade alright? Had she found the Arbora and the Sky Copper fledglings? But the more he thought about it, the more he knew he didn’t really have any right to know, much less a reason. He was cut off from Indigo Cloud, cut off from the world of Raksura, on the other side of an invisible veil. Just because the Turquoise Lake Raksura couldn’t see it didn’t mean it didn’t exist. Probably, on some level, they could sense that he wasn’t like them, not anymore if ever, and that was why they subconsciously felt uncomfortable around him.

Except Fog, for some reason. Fog had never seemed to doubt him in the slightest. Well, there were exceptions to everything. But that just made him feel even worse about deceiving him.

And what if Jade or someone else from Indigo Cloud really did come here, instead of just sending a message through the other courts? He couldn’t think why they would bother to come in person just to reject him, but after that last bizarre message from Pearl, he wasn’t sure about anything anymore. If they did come, though, he didn’t want to see them, or face the accusation and disgust he knew he would find in their eyes. After all, they had to know about him and Ranea. The Arbora who had been imprisoned with him had known, and they had no reason to keep his secrets. They hadn’t said anything to him at the time, but then, they had needed his help to escape. More than any of the others, though, he couldn’t bear to have Jade look at him that way.

Even more than that, he couldn’t face her again knowing that he had failed her. The last thing she had said to him was not to let the kethel escape with the Arbora. But he had let it get away, and even gotten caught himself. She had accepted him despite his lack of bloodline, despite her doubts, because she had trusted him to be able to defend her court. But when it mattered the most, he had failed. Not only had he not been able to defeat the kethel, he hadn’t even been able to stall it long enough for the queens to get there. That Lothas had been there as well was no excuse. Because of his inability, Jade’s Arbora had been caught by the Fell, suffered at their hands, and then had to survive on their own in the forest for who knew how long. Hopefully not too long, if Jade had found them quickly. But she probably had. She was strong and competent that way, unlike him. The more he thought about it, the more he realized how poor a match he was for her.

Even if he hadn’t encountered Ranea, Jade had been bound to notice eventually that he wasn’t strong enough or good enough to be worth keeping. This had only sped up the inevitable.

“Moon? Is everything all right?”

Moon jumped. Fog was crouching next to him. He had been so lost in his thoughts he hadn’t noticed. “Sorry,” he said.

“It’s fine. It’s getting late. I brought you the simple Image made.” He handed Moon a cup.

Moon took it. “Thank you.”

“Don’t worry about it too much. I’m sure your court is fine and your queen will be here soon.”

Moon nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

Fog stood for a moment, and Moon thought if he hadn’t been in groundling form, his tail might have lashed. But then he turned toward his own bower.

Moon got up to go to his own borrowed bower. Once there, he considered the sleeping simple. It was so tempting to just drink it and forget everything, and leave all his problems until the morning.

But ultimately, that wouldn’t change anything. No amount of sunlight or waiting would make his problems go away. And letting more days pass while he lingered here would just make them worse. He didn’t belong here, not at Turquiose Lake, not at Indigo Cloud, not among Raksura. He needed to leave. He set the simple aside.

He waited awake until deep into the night. Earlier on he thought he heard Fog at the door to his bower once looking in on him, but he pretended to be asleep until light footsteps told him he had left.

When Moon felt sure everyone was asleep, he got up. He had thought a long time about what to bring. Nothing here belonged to him. He had received so much from this colony, and he had nothing to give them in return. The warning about the Fell would have to be enough, though he knew it hadn’t been.

In the end, he decided to take only the clothes he was wearing, as he no longer had the groundling clothes he came in, and those had been stolen anyways. He could hunt with his claws well enough, and it wasn’t like he had never had to start from scratch before. He would have to fly a long ways alone to get out of Raksura territory before stopping to find more groundlings to blend in with anyways.

He didn’t know a lot about the layout of the colony, since he had only seen it when entering, and had spent most all of his time on the consorts’ level to avoid encountering any queens. Still, it wasn’t so complex he couldn’t make his way. He climbed down back passages, retreating whenever he heard footsteps, until he made it to the level of the entrance hall. After doubling back a couple of times, he found a passage whose air-currents indicated it led to the outside. He followed it, and stepping out at the end onto a stone walkway that ran along the outer wall of the structure. The drop at the edge was steep, perfect for takeoffs. The stars glittered in the sky, above the tops of the trees. He shifted, spread his wings, and prepared to jump off.

“What are you doing?” The voice came from several paces to his right.

He whirled around. A warrior in shifted form had come around the edge of the walkway. It was hard to see in the dark, but Moon thought his scales were blue, or possibly a dark green.

Moon should have known there would be warriors on guard around the colony, even at night, especially since Turquoise Lake knew there were Fell in the area. But he was still so surprised by the sudden appearance his mind went blank and he couldn’t think of what to say. Should he lie and say he was on patrol? But the warrior would know he wasn’t a Turquoise Lake warrior, even in the dark. Would he think he was a warrior from Peridot Light? It might work if it was too dark for him to see his scales.

The warrior’s tail lashed. “Who even are…oh, you must be the consort from Indigo Cloud.”

Well, apparently it wasn’t that dark. Moon supposed if he had been able to make out the warrior’s scale color, it stood to reason the opposite would also be true.

“What are you doing here?” the warrior asked, confused.

He couldn’t say he was hunting. Not in the middle of the night. And real consorts didn’t hunt anyways. “I’m going out to fly.”

“In the dark?” the warrior was nonplussed. “There’s Fell in the area. Sapphire said no one can go out alone, especially at night.”

“I’m not going far,” Moon lied.

It was hard to see with only starlight, but Moon thought the warrior’s spines rippled in consternation. “Um…why don’t you go back and ask Fog? I’m sure he’ll find someone to come out and fly with you tomorrow.”

The whole reason Moon was leaving now was so that there wouldn’t be anyone awake to stop him. That plan wasn’t quite working out, but even though this warrior had noticed him, that didn’t mean he could stop him from leaving. Moon might not be able to outfly another consort, but even with his wing still stiff, he thought he could outfly a young warrior. As long as he got far enough away, he didn’t think Turquoise Lake would bother with him anymore. They had bigger problems to deal with, like the Fell, or whatever crop disease Garnet had been trying to discreetly seek help from other colonies about when Moon ran into her the first time.

Taking a step away from the warrior, Moon spread his wings and leapt off the platform.

“Hey, what are you doing?” the warrior called after him.

But Moon just kept flying.

After a while he looked back, but there was no one following him. He wasn’t surprised. Turquoise Lake had no reason to care whether he came or left, so there was no reason for them to come after him, besides suspicion or spite. It wasn’t like he had stolen anything from them except the clothes, and Raksura tended to have a lot of clothes so he thought they wouldn’t miss them too much.

He flew out across the treetops. It felt good to stretch his wings. His injured wing was still stiff, and the movement pulled at the muscles, but it was at the stage where flying would help the injury rather than making it worse.

He knew it would be a long flight. He was heading south, since that direction would take him away from the Fell. His plan was to keep flying at least until morning, until he was too tired to continue. By then he should be far enough away from any other Raksura that he could take a break without fear of anyone happening to see him. This time, he would be more careful about finding cover quickly when he landed, so situations like the encounter with Garnet wouldn’t happen again. The treetops below him were like a dark lake, the breeze giving the shadowy mass the suggestion of movement, and the wind was cool and slow against his scales. He had almost forgotten how great it felt to fly when his wing wasn’t protesting in agony.

He was just letting his mind wander, when he felt rather than heard something behind him. He turned, then yelped and twisted away as a dark shape dropped down through the air at the spot where he had just been. It spread its wings again and veered to face him. It was considerably bigger than him.

His heart raced. Had the Fell found him again? But it didn’t smell like Fell. Actually, it smelled like –

The shape made a second pass, and Moon twisted again, but this time the attacker was expecting it. Clawed hands grabbed him out of the air. He struggled, but he was too weak to break free.

“Hold still,” said Sapphire in his ear.

What was she even doing here?

“Let go of me!” Moon demanded.

Sapphire adjusted her grip. “When we’re back,” she said cryptically, and with a few powerful wing beats, sent them flying fast back the way Moon had come, back toward Turquoise Lake.

Moon growled in frustration. She was too strong. He couldn’t get away.

The journey back took even less time than it had taken Moon to cross the short stretch of forest, since Sapphire was bigger and faster and didn’t have a stiff wing to deal with either. But it was still enough time for him to turn to thinking about what she was going to do with him when they got back. She already had been suspicious of him, and his running away in the middle of the night would just make her more so. He had no idea what conclusions the queens had come to about the earlier message from Pearl. Had they found out he was a solitary, and were they going to kill him?

Eventually, the dark mound of Peridot Light appeared, and Sapphire angled down into a higher opening near the roof of the entry hall. Once inside, she set down lightly on the floor. A few warriors were standing in the hall, looking relieved at her entrance rather than surprised, as if they had been waiting for her. Sapphire set Moon on the floor and stepped back, but not too far. She kept her eyes on him as if she thought he was going to try to fly away again and needed to be ready to catch him.

Moon backed away from her in a crouch.

“Moon?” Fog came through an opening on the side. He rubbed at bleary eyes, as if he had just been woken up. “Sapphire? What’s going on?”

Sapphire flicked a spine at a warrior standing beside the pool. He seemed familiar, and after a moment Moon recognized him as the warrior he had encountered outside the colony. With more light here, Moon could see now that his scales were actually dark blue.

“Um…I don’t know?” The warrior said hesitantly. “I was just patrolling outside the colony, and then the Indigo Cloud consort came out and flew off.” His spines rippled anxiously.

“Moon?” Fog turned back to him. “Why would you fly off like that? Where were you going?”

Moon stood up, but took another step away from Sapphire. “Back to my colony.”

“In the middle of the night?”

Moon shrugged his spines.

Fog exchanged a look with Sapphire. Eventually he sighed. “Look, why don’t you come back with me to the consort’s bowers and we can talk about this in the morning?”

Moon crossed his arms. “Why? There’s nothing to talk about. You don’t want me here, and I don’t want to be here, and if you’ll just let me I’ll leave on my own. I don’t see what the problem is.”

Sapphire’s spines flared, and Moon hopped back another step. She turned to face him. “Why do you think we don’t want you here?”

Great, now he had offended her. He struggled not to growl at her, or to back up all the way to the wall. “I didn’t mean it like that. I’m grateful for your hospitality, I really am. I know I’m a bother for you to have here,” a flash of inspiration came to him, “so since my colony is passing nearby anyways, I thought I would just go find them myself and save you the trouble of passing more messages.”

“In the middle of the night?” asked Sapphire. Her tail lashed slowly behind her.

Moon felt his spines twitch involuntarily. “Traveling in the dark can be convenient.”

“And what was I supposed to tell your queen when she came here looking for you because you got eaten on the way there?”

She wouldn’t have to tell his queen anything, since Jade wasn’t coming to get him. But Sapphire didn’t know that. Even so, Moon felt his spines flare. “I wouldn’t get eaten. I can manage on my own.” He immediately regretted saying it. That was halfway to admitting that he was a solitary.

But Sapphire didn’t seem to notice. She mostly just seemed annoyed, and something else Moon couldn’t interpret. She stilled her tail and took a step toward Moon.

Moon looked around to find the nearest opening to the outside, preparing to make a break for it. He couldn’t outfly her in the open sky, but if she got annoyed enough, maybe she would stop caring and let him leave. Either that or rip his throat out. Well, he would have to take his chances.

“Stop!” said Fog. Normally he was very soft-spoken, but at that moment his voice held a kind of authority Moon wasn’t used to hearing in it. Though Sapphire’s consort was technically the first consort, he knew Fog still held a very high position here. He just hadn’t seen why up until this moment.

Both Sapphire and Moon stopped and looked to him, as did the few warriors in the hall. The warriors had looked anxious throughout the whole discussion. Probably they weren’t used to seeing consorts argue with queens.

“Arguing here like this isn’t helping anything,” Fog said firmly. “I think we should all just go back and rest now, and we can discuss this further in the morning. Sapphire,” Fog turned to her, “I’m sure Moon didn’t mean to offer offense to your court or hospitality. He said as much himself.”

Sapphire purposefully settled her spines, apparently willing to be talked down by Fog.

Next Fog turned to Moon. “Moon, I know you want to find your queen, but leaving in the middle of the night without telling anyone is not the way to do it. Even if it’s hard, you need to be patient.” His gaze wasn’t angry, exactly, but it was unyielding.

For a moment, they just stared at each other. Then suddenly, Moon felt tired. What did it matter, anyways, if Indigo Cloud told them he was a solitary and they killed him? It wasn’t like he had anywhere great to go after this. For one thing, them killing him would save him months of traveling on his own with no supplies or possessions. And it wouldn’t be a bad thing to never get kicked out of another groundling settlement either. Moon dropped his confrontational posture and lowered his spines.

Fog shifted down. After a moment, Moon shifted down as well.

Fog grabbed Moon’s wrist, and with a glance at Sapphire, pulled Moon out of the entrance hall along the passage leading to the consorts’ bowers.

When Moon woke up the next morning, he was lying beside the hearth in the consorts’ hall. He remembered falling asleep here beside Fog, once they left the entrance hall after Sapphire had brought him back.

He could hear the low voices of the other consorts coming from the other side of the hearth. He listened, but Fog’s voice wasn’t among them.

“It’s just so strange,” one of them was saying. Moon thought he recognized the voice as belonging to Hyacinth, one of the younger consorts. “Why wouldn’t he just wait until his court came to get him?”

“Maybe he thought they wouldn’t come?” That was Helix, consort to one of the daughter queens of Sapphire’s bloodline.

“That’s ridiculous,” said Hyacinth.

“Well, if you think about the message their queens sent…” Helix sounded unsure.

There was a clinking, as if one of them was moving a kettle around on the hearth warming stones.

“But to leave alone in the middle of the night…it just seems crazy!” Hyacinth muttered.

There was silence for a moment.

Then another voice said, “Well, that’s just it, isn’t it?” The voice was deeper, older. Moon recognized it as Mist’s, former consort of Sapphire’s deceased sister queen.

“What do you mean?” Helix asked.

“Imagine if you had been a prisoner of the Fell for weeks, watching them eat your Arbora, knowing they were going to eat you next. Who wouldn’t be a little bit crazy after all that?” Mist’s tone was deceptively light.

“Oh, I don’t want to think about it.” Moon could hear the shudder in Helix’s voice. There was a rustling sound, as if he were shifting position. “I hope they don’t attack us here. Aurora says she thinks it would be fun to fight Fell, but she’s never even seen them before, and I’m afraid she would get hurt.”

“Actually,” said Mist, “don’t repeat this to Fog or,” there was a pause, “him, but there’s a good chance that the reason his court hasn’t sent anyone to get him is because they _were_ attacked by the Fell again, and can’t afford to split up.”

It wasn’t that that possibility hadn’t occurred to Moon. It was just that there were so many other more likely possibilities, he had decided not to think about that one.

“Should we…should we really be talking about this with him right there?” another consort, Wisteria, asked. He spent most of his time on the queen’s level, so Moon knew little about him.

“Well, what else would we do, go to the mentor’s hall?” Mist said dryly. “Fog asked us to stay here and watch him in case he wakes up and tries to fly away again.”

“But why would he do that?” Wisteria asked.

“Like Mist already said, it’s because he’s insane,” Hyacinth said darkly.

“I thought you were just joking about that,” said Wisteria uncertainly.

“It’s probably true, though,” said Hyacinth thoughtfully. “Fog said he flew three days on a broken wing, and I can’t imagine anyone in their right mind doing that.”

“That’s not possible,” Helix scoffed. “You’re exaggerating.”

“No,” countered Hyacinth, “I asked Image and she said it was true. And she was the one who treated his wing, so she should know.”

“Huh,” said Helix more soberly. Then, “But if he’s really insane, will his queen even want him anymore?”

Ha. Moon wished that were the only reason Jade had not to want him. He had been crazy by Raksura standards since even before he met her, but that had never seemed to bother her. No, Helix was right that Jade wouldn’t want him, just wrong about the reasons. The younger consort didn’t know the half of it.

“If she has any sense, she’ll realize how lucky she is to even still have a consort at all.” There was rustling as everyone turned at the sound of Fog’s voice, suddenly coming from one of the outer doorways.

“Oh, Fog,” said Helix awkwardly. “I didn’t realize you had gotten back.”

“Yes, the queens are finished discussing, finally.” Fog seemed vaguely annoyed.

If some decision had been made, Moon needed to hear it as soon as possible. There was no point in trying to hide from it or putting it off. He moved slightly as if he were just waking up, and the others suddenly went silent.

He sat up and looked around, as Fog crossed through the doorway and came to sit by the hearth next to Moon.

“Did Sapphire and Garnet…say anything?” Moon hazarded. He was a bit worried the others might realize he had been listening to their conversation, until he remembered he wouldn’t be here much longer one way or the other so he had no reason to care what they thought.

Fog didn’t look entirely happy about what he was about to say. “They decided that since you don’t want to stay here, it’s best for you to leave.”

Moon wasn’t surprised by this. If Fog was here talking to him, though, that probably meant they were just going to kick him out and not kill him. Or at least, if they had decided on the latter, they hadn’t told Fog about it. But if they were kicking him out, that was exactly what Moon wanted. If they were going to anyways, though, why hadn’t they just let him leave last night, and saved themselves all the trouble?

Fog was watching his expression, and when he apparently decided that he had given Moon enough time to get upset or angry and it wasn’t going to happen, he continued. “Sapphire is sending Garnet with another embassy to Peridot Light. Since your colony is probably still in the area, she thinks if she sends you with them, you’ll run into them on the way, and they can give you back then.”

Moon blinked in surprise. That…was something he hadn’t thought of. It was clever, too. A perfectly acceptable way for Sapphire to be rid of him, without looking like she was kicking him out. And it was advantageous to him as well, since he could slip away from a small group more easily than an entire colony.

“Great,” said Moon. “When do we leave?”

“Tomorrow. The Peridot Light warriors already left, but Garnet thinks you might be able to catch up to them.” Fog was still frowning, and Moon wondered what he didn’t like about this arrangement.

Fog poured himself a cup of tea, then poured another for Moon.

“You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.” Fogs’ eyes were fixed on the hearth. “I can talk to Garnet, and she can convince Sapphire to let you stay until your queen gets here.”

Moon was puzzled. Why would Fog think he wanted that? He shook his head. “No, I like this plan.”

“Are you…well,” Fog turned to peer at him, “are you not worried about going outside the colony?”

“Why would I be worried?”

“Well, it’s perfectly understandable to be afraid of the Fell, especially after all that happened to you. Of course, you’ll be fine since Garnet will protect you, but I know you don’t…get along well with queens.”

Ah. While Moon knew it would be awkward and uncomfortable traveling with Garnet and her warriors again, it wouldn’t be for very long. He would just have to strike out on his own sooner rather than later. “It’ll be fine,” he told Fog.

Fog adjusted the teapot on the hearth. “Well, if that’s what you want.”

Chapter 6

The next morning, Moon woke up before any of the other consorts, even Fog. Normally he would have stayed on the consorts’ level to avoid running into anyone else and looked at one of the books with illustrations or something. But today, he was leaving, and he was going to have to deal with others whether he wanted to or not. There was no sense lingering here any longer.

He made his way through the winding passages, trailing his hand along the blue-flowering vines that grew everywhere in the colony. He had taken a route that seemed out of the way to avoid running into anyone. But this solitude lasted only until he came out into the entrance hall. Several Arbora and warriors were waiting there, talking or working or sitting on the edge of the fountain. A group of warriors near the back seemed to have just gotten back from a patrol, and some of the Arbora clustered in the center were carrying packs, probably waiting for Garnet and her warriors. There were no warriors with packs here yet, but Aeriat tended to sleep more than Arbora, so the warriors going would probably be asleep until just before it was time to leave.

Moon wondered whether Garnet was intending to bring the Arbora waiting here along with her, or whether they were just here to pass along her supplies and see her off. He would have expected Turquoise Lake to put off any visits that required Arbora, at least until they were more confident the Fell were gone, but maybe their crop-disease problem was more urgent than Moon had realized.

Moon’s entrance from the back-passage had been silent, and he made his way without anyone noticing to a stone section of what looked like broken-off steps near the passage to the main entrance. The section was a couple of paces high, and he sat down on it, curling his tail around the edge and settling in to wait.

One of the Arbora glanced his way, then did a double-take. The others she was talking with noticed her staring and followed her gaze, and now they were all staring at Moon. He looked pointedly off to the side and pretended not to notice them.

Thankfully, they soon went back to talking and seemed to forget about him. Moon went back to waiting in peace and semi-solitude. There was still an hour until the sun came up, and Garnet’s group probably wouldn’t be leaving before then, considering the attitude these people seemed to have toward traveling at night.

The sun was over the horizon and beams of light were creeping in the openings to the colony when Garnet finally dropped down from a balcony near the top of the hall. She folded her wings and looked around.

Moon had been lost in thought and not paying much attention to his surroundings, but with Garnet’s arrival he snapped back to reality. Without Moon’s realizing it, the hall had filled up with Raksura, warriors and Arbora milling about and chatting. Noticing Garnet’s entrance, various warriors broke away from their groups and went to join her. They were all carrying packs. These must be the ones going with her.

He recognized some of them. There was Tide again, and Scatter, plus two other older warriors, a female and a male, that he hadn’t seen before. Dive and Splash were talking with Image near the pool, and looked up when Garnet arrived, but they weren’t carrying packs, as if they weren’t going and were only there to give parting greetings. Moon thought it was wise of Garnet to leave them behind. They were younger, and he would bet they didn’t have as much experience in a fight as some of the others. If they encountered the Fell along the way, that experience might mean the difference between life and death.

Moon stayed at his spot near the entrance opening. There was no place for him in their goodbyes, and he wasn’t particularly worried about Garnet trying to leave him behind, since he was sure most everyone here wanted the crazy foreign consort out of their colony anyways.

Fog emerged out of a side passage in groundling form, and the warriors and Arbora made way for him as he walked over to Garnet.

When he reached her, Garnet wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close against her chest. Moon suppressed a flash of envy. Fog had been Garnet’s consort for years, and had fathered two of her clutches. Something Moon had once hoped to experience with Jade, but now never would. He shook his head to clear the bitter thoughts. Fog had been nicer to him than he had any reason to ever expect, and he wasn’t going to let himself resent him.

Garnet held Fog at arm’s-length and looked him in the eye. Their voices weren’t loud, but there was almost no one standing between them and Moon, so Moon could still hear them quite clearly. “You’ll be fine here,” said Garnet. “I trust Sapphire to watch over the colony. Just, be careful while I’m gone.” The amber queen looked concerned.

Fog frowned slightly. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come? It might make things go more…smoothly.” Did he think he could help in the negotiations for information about the crop disease? Moon really didn’t know much about Raksuran diplomacy, but he supposed it was possible.

Garnet’s tail lashed, and her eyes narrowed. “Absolutely not. We’ve discussed this already. It’s not safe.”

Fog sighed. “Fine. But you’ll be careful too, right?”

“Of course.”

Garnet flicked a spine, and her warriors said their goodbyes. The others made way for her group pass to the entrance. Fog walked with Garnet almost to the entrance tunnel, as if reluctant to let her leave.

As the group passed by where Moon was sitting, he got up but stood back, waiting to follow a few paces behind them. But as Fog passed him, he stopped and grabbed Moon’s wrist, looking at him carefully. “Don’t worry. It’ll be fine, okay?”

Moon thought Fog was the one that seemed worried. As for himself, he was anxious to leave. He wasn’t afraid of traveling outside a colony alone, much less with other Raksura. Still, he appreciated Fog’s concern. “Yes. Thanks. For everything.”

Fog blinked and smiled. “Your queen will be so glad to see you again.”

Moon wished that were true.

Fog dropped his wrist and hurried forward to catch up with Garnet, murmuring a few last things to her.

Then they were passing through the entrance tunnel, and out into the crisp morning breeze. Moon leapt off the edge into the wind. The others were already circling, waiting until everyone was in the air to set out.

Garnet angled her wings and gained altitude, and the others followed. Moon trailed behind, but not too far. If something happened, it was better to be close, since they would have better chances fighting together than separately.

They flew through the morning. As the sun rose, it warmed the air and his scales. The wind became pleasantly cool, and the stiffness in his wing faded until he didn’t notice it unless he was paying attention. The others didn’t try to fly near him, which was a relief too. He felt free again. Not that he had felt trapped at Turquoise Lake, exactly. But it had been a place he didn’t really belong, where he was only pretending to fit in. Here, in the sky, this was where he was truly at home. Here, he could go anywhere. He felt an echo of the same sense of freedom and relief as he had when he escaped the Fell.

The trees and plains passed endlessly beneath them. When the sun was at its highest point overhead, Garnet banked to the side, apparently calling for a stop.

The amber queen glided down, and her warriors followed her, landing and arranging themselves in a semi-circle around her. Moon approached last. He considered just staying up here and circling above them until they were ready to go on, until he realized the others were looking toward him. Probably they expected him to land. Reluctantly, he did so, keeping several paces back from the others.

Garnet turned to her warriors. “We’re making good time. And I haven’t seen or scented anything that would indicate Fell. Have any of you?”

She looked around at the others as they shook their heads, her eyes lighting on Moon last. Moon twitched.

Her expression unreadable, she flicked a spine at Tide.

Tide nodded and turned to Moon. “Moon, is your wing alright?”

“It’s fine,” he said. Hadn’t he been keeping up with them? Did they think he was dragging them down because he was always flying in the back? But he couldn’t exactly tell them to their faces that he was just avoiding them, not without risking offending them. But what were they going to do? Leave him behind? All the better if they did. That would suit his purposes perfectly.

“I’ll take the lead with Tide again. Hover, you fall back and watch for anything following us.” Garnet flicked her spine at the older female warrior with green scales who Moon hadn’t met.

Hover nodded.

Moon scowled. Clearly, Garnet didn’t like him messing up her formation. This was why he couldn’t stand queens. He would have to find a time to slip away as soon as possible.

Garnet couldn’t have missed him frowning at her, but she just glanced at him opaquely and took to the air again.

They flew through the rest of the day uneventfully. When it started to get dark, Garnet took them down to a cave in a grassy hillside. They made a fire and chatted, and Moon sat back away from them. They chose watches, leaving Moon out. Moon made to sleep on the periphery, intending to slip away as quietly as possible sometime in the night, but Tide came over and made him pull his blanket closer to the fire. Maybe the next night would offer a better chance. Or maybe he could find a time while they were flying tomorrow to drop out of sight above one of the denser forests.

Flying this far for the first time since his wing had healed had been more exhausting than Moon had expected, and he fell asleep immediately. He still woke up several times in the night, starting awake whenever the warriors changed watch shifts, or when the wind changed and he smelled Garnet’s queen-scent. Her scent wasn’t really much like Ranea’s, yet it still had certain similarities that tugged at his subconscious. He thought he might have woken Tide, sleeping near him, once or twice, but at least he managed not to scream out loud or anything.

The next day, they rose with the dawn and continued in the same direction as the day before. There was a solid breeze from the northeast. The land was the same, plains dotted with trees, interspersed with denser sections of forest. It was past midday when they stopped on a rocky bluff, jutting out just below the crest of a low hill. The plains stretched out to the south and west, and north and east of them in the direction they were going was a hilly, forested area.

Garnet waited until they had all landed to explain why she had called the stop. “We’re about to come to a large stretch of forest as soon as we cross these hills. It should take a bit over a day to cross. It’s not that dangerous really, but the trees are quite dense and none of us have a lot of experience with the kinds of predators that live there, so I don’t want us to risk hunting until we’re past it. I saw a herd of grasseaters just south of us, so we’re going to stop and hunt before we continue.”

The warriors all accepted Garnet’s decision without question, though in their place Moon thought he would have felt insulted. Still, her logic seemed reasonable enough to Moon. He himself had enough experience that he would probably be fine hunting anywhere, but if the warriors here hunted anything like the ones at Indigo Cloud, Garnet’s caution was well warranted.

“Hover, Scatter, and Spiral, you go hunt,” Garnet said, flicking a spine. “Tide stay here, and I’ll go scout ahead.”

This seemed like a strange way to assign tasks. Why wasn’t she bringing Tide along to scout? And what was Moon supposed to do? Moon decided he would be best off just helping the group sent to hunt, since it would take him further away from Garnet.

Hover, Scatter, and Spiral made to take off, and Moon made to follow them.

Everyone stopped and looked at him strangely.

“Um…Moon, where are you going?” Tide asked.

“Um…to help them hunt?” Moon frowned. If Garnet had wanted him to scout, why couldn’t she have just said so?

“You should stay here with me,” Tide said, after exchanging a glance with Garnet.

What? Oh, Moon got it now, of course that was what Garnet had in mind, and why she had chosen to leave Tide behind. Tide was supposed to guard _him_. To stop him from running away? After a moment of reflection though, Moon thought it was more likely she was worried about the Fell. That would explain why she wasn’t letting anyone go alone. Besides herself, of course, but queens were like that.

“I can help hunt,” Moon suggested, not looking at her, “and then Tide could go with you. I think Fog would be worried if you went to scout alone.”

“He’s right, you know,” Tide said hesitantly, glancing at Garnet. “You really shouldn’t go alone.”

Garnet sighed and flicked a spine. “Fine, if Moon’s okay with it.” She sent a hard look at the three other warriors. “Remember,” she started to say, “keep an eye out –,”

She cut off as several dark shapes hurtled over the top of the hill. They tucked in their black wings, as they dove directly for the Raksura.

An attack! Even as Moon crouched in readiness, the smell reached him. Fell! The stench was unmistakable. How could they have gotten so close unnoticed?

The wind, Moon realized. The Raksura had been flying into the wind, which had hidden the smell.

As the attackers closed in, Moon saw that they were all dakti. As soon as they were within range, Moon leapt forward and slashed at one with his claws. Its blood splashed across his scales as he whirled to check on the others. But the other warriors and Garnet had already taken out the other three dakti who had attacked. For a brief moment, Moon hoped that they had encountered an isolated scouting party and the fight was over. The rulers would still have seen their dakti die through the connection, so the Raksura would have to flee immediately, but at least they would have a chance.

But then more dark shapes crested the top of the hill, flapping rough, black-scaled wings, but much too big to be dakti. Two kethel, a ruler – and one shape that at first didn’t look like any type of Fell at all. A progenitor-queen. Ranea.

Garnet’s group clustered together defensively, but Ranea didn’t attack immediately, though Moon doubted she was much intimidated by the fate of her vanguard. She landed a few paces in front of the Raksura. Moon saw Garnet whip her head back in confusion, as she caught Ranea’s strange, foul scent, too sharp to be masked by the general decaying Fell-stench of the rest. More dakti scrambled over the top of the hill after their queen.

This couldn’t be happening, Moon thought. It didn’t seem real. Unless…Demus must not be dead after all. All the distance Moon had flown on a broken wing, all the lies he had told Turquoise Lake, and all of it for nothing. Everything he did was useless. He felt despair well within his chest. Suddenly he knew with dread certainty that he would never escape Ranea ever again. All he had really accomplished by running was to lead these poor Raksura from another court here to die with him.

Ranea’s gaze passed over the Raksura one by one. When her blue eyes reached Moon, they widened in surprise, and a chilling smile spread across her face. “Hello Moon,” she said in Raksuran. “What luck, that we have managed to find each other once again.” Her voice in shifted form was rougher than her groundling voice, with less inflection.

“What…” Moon had to swallow and start again, his throat had become so dry. “What are you doing here?”

Ranea rippled her spines. “We came to find more companions, of course. We were so sad when you left us.” Her cold smile widened, revealing her impressive array of pointed teeth.

Moon took an involuntary step back.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Garnet glancing between them, narrowing her eyes at Ranea in confusion. It was clear the amber queen could tell that Ranea was neither a ruler nor a progenitor, and wasn’t quite sure to make of her. Moon wondered what conclusion she would come to.

“How did you find me?” He asked Ranea. He had to know. “Was it Demus?”

Ranea’s face suddenly darkened, and her spines flared. “No,” she hissed, flexing her claws. “The groundlings killed him.” She flattened her spines, and looked back to Moon. “But it’s alright now that you’re here. Now we can make another.”

Moon shuddered. “But how _did_ you find me, then?”

“Find you?” Ranea cocked her head. “We didn’t. We thought you long gone. But instead, you flew right back to us.” Her tail lashed, and she stalked another step forward.

Moon felt his spines slump in disbelief. How could his luck be this bad?

Garnet stepped closer to Moon. “Who are they?” she asked urgently, in a low voice. When Moon didn’t respond, she turned back to Ranea. “Who are you? You’re not Fell.”

Ranea laughed, the sound strangely empty of feeling.

“She is a Fell,” Moon said.

Garnet frowned at him suspiciously. “You know her?”

Moon half-shrugged. There was point in hiding the truth anymore. Against two kethel, a ruler, and a progenitor-queen, plus who-knew-how-many dakti, none of the Raksura here stood a chance, even with a queen and a consort on their side. But there wasn’t enough time now for Moon to explain all his lies to Garnet, if he could even convince her that he was telling the truth this time.

“Get away from him, he’s mine,” Ranea hissed, taking another step forward. “And after I finish ripping your throats out, I’ll be bringing him back with me.”

Moon flinched reflexively.

“What is she talking about?” Garnet demanded.

“I can’t…I don’t have time to explain.” Moon turned to her and spoke quickly in a low voice, his tone rising in increasing desperation. “She is a Fell, just a different type. She’s in charge of the flight that attacked my court.”

What could he do even by explaining to Garnet, though? It wasn’t like they could win, no matter what he told her.

But, Moon realized, there was still a way out, a way he could avoid being taken by Ranea again. He just had to die here. On his own, he probably wasn’t enough of a threat to force Ranea to kill him. He had to convince Garnet to help him fight her to the death.

He looked back at Garnet. Her expression was laced with anxiety. “None of us,” he muttered to her, and her eyes flicked back to him, “are going to survive this. Not against her and a ruler and two kethel. She can keep the warriors from shifting if they’re not careful.”

Garnet’s eyes widened slightly. “We have to do something!” she hissed quietly. “I’m not letting them go back to attack my colony!”

“We have to kill her.” Moon met Garnet’s eyes and held them. “Since she’s in charge of the flight, if we kill her, the others will feel it through the connection and the whole flight will be plunged into too much chaos to mount any coordinated attacks. We can’t take out all of them, but if the warriors delay the others, you and I together are strong enough to finish her.” Moon actually was less than sure about that last claim, but he needed to convince Garnet to agree to his plan. And it wasn’t like he would have to answer for his lies, since if his plan worked right, he would be dead in a couple minutes.

Garnet nodded, the fear in her eyes draining away, to be replaced by a glare of steely resolve. She flicked a spine at her warriors. “Hold the others off, while the consort and I take on the…progenitor.”

The warriors were in varying states of surprise and shock from the abrupt attack, and at suddenly finding themselves outnumbered and outmatched. But Garnet’s confidence and determination seemed to radiate out into all of them, and they nodded back to her, tensing to attack.

“What are you whispering about over there?” Ranea called, flexing her wings. “Would you like to surrender and join us? If you do, we won’t kill you.” Did she think they were groundlings, to believe such a blatant lie?

“Now!” cried Garnet, and as one the Turquoise Lake Raksura and Moon rushed at the Fell.

But the Fell were prepared. Apparently they were used to Ranea’s offers of truce being turned down by people aware of the Fell proclivity to deception. The two kethel lunged at the warriors, who scattered to dodge out of the way. The dakti leapt shrieking down the hill, as Janeas dived at Moon. Moon, in shifted form, feeling Ranea’s powers pressing against him but not giving her any opportunity to make him shift down, blocked a swipe of Janeas’s claws with his wing and shot after Garnet, who had made straight for Ranea.

Ranea flared her wings and her spines as Garnet bore down on her. Moon made it just in time to hit her from the side as Garnet lunged for her face, but Ranea knocked Garnet’s claws away, sidestepping Moon’s lunge. Moon had to twist out of the way as she made a grab for him.

He stumbled, and felt a thump behind him. Before he could whirl around, claws closed around his throat. “Still think you can run, little consort?” Janeas hissed in his ear.

Moon kicked at Janeas with his disemboweling claws. He missed, but it was enough of a distraction for him to sink his claws into the scales of Janeas’s forarms. Janeas let out a grunt and his grip loosed, and Moon took the opportunity to wrench free.

Garnet and Ranea were locked in battle, crashing into rocks and the few trees growing along the cliff. They slammed across the open area and into a boulder mere paces from where Moon was crouching. Bracing herself against the stone surface, Ranea hurled Garnet away from her.

Before Ranea could turn, Moon leapt up and grabbed onto her back, trying to jab his claws into her wing joint, but she gave a violent twist and he felt his grip on her scales loosen. Then suddenly her claws were around his arm and she pulled him in front of her, switching her grip to his throat.

He saw Garnet pulling herself up against the trunk of a tree, deep scratches marring the scales of her left wing. She looked up and saw Ranea holding him as if about to snap his neck, and her eyes went wide.

Behind them, crashes and cries meant that at least some of the Turquoise Lake warriors were still fighting, but Moon couldn’t see any of them from the angle Ranea was holding him.

“Why won’t you stop fighting me? Aren’t you even glad to see me again?” Ranea cooed in his ear. “Well, no matter. For now, I’ll leave you with something to keep you occupied so you can watch the rest without interfering.” He had a moment to wonder what she was talking about, before he felt one of her claws loosen its grip and slide down his back, to grasp his right wing-joint, the one that was still swollen from before. His eyes widened. She wasn’t going to –

He barely heard the crack, as white-hot pain spiked all along his side. He screamed.

There was a flicker of crimson as Garnet lunged at Ranea, but his vision was too blurred to make out any detail. Ranea dropped him to parry Garnet, and he felt himself fall to his knees. No! He wouldn’t be captured like this. Never again! Just a little more, just a little more and then it would all be over.

He pushed himself staggering to his feet, just in time to see Janeas lunge for Garnet’s exposed back. He shoved himself between them, and felt Janeas’s claws rake his side.

Janeas took a half-step back, claws covered in Moon’s blood but clearly not intending to kill Moon.

“Not him, you idiot!” Ranea shrieked. “The red queen! Attack her!”

Moon staggered toward Garnet, but fell to his knees. Garnet had her back to him, her arms raised defensively, as Ranea lunged again. She was shaking slightly, though whether from adrenaline or blood-loss Moon couldn’t tell. He had no idea how the others were doing or where they were. He could barely think from the pain. Not like it mattered. They were all going to die, and Ranea was going to take him back with her, and there was nothing any of them could do about any of it.

Suddenly, a blue blur slammed out of the forest and into Ranea’s back.

Ranea shrieked and twisted, abandoning her attack on Garnet. But Garnet took the opportunity to attack anyways, leaping forward to catch Ranea’s wing.

The progenitor-queen twisted away, leaping into the air and flapping bleeding wings to try to get some altitude.

Moon blinked pain-tears out of his eyes and got a good look at the newcomer. What? He recognized her immediately, of course. The blue scales with gold webbing were unmistakable. But what was Jade doing here? How was it even possible for her to be here?

“Jade, there are two kethel! What should we do?” Balm’s voice came from a short distance away.

Jade turned her head to the side. “Just hold on for a few minutes,” she called. “I’ll be there soon.”

Jade shouldn’t be here! Ranea was going to kill her!

Jade glanced at Moon, her gaze lingering for a half-second that felt so much longer, before turning to where Garnet crouched, testing her bleeding wing. “We take her together.”

“Yes.”

Though under normal circumstances Raksuran queens would be suspicious and hostile towards one another, against Fell it seemed that alliance, however temporary, was the rule. The two queens sprang into the air at the same time.

Moon heard a crunch behind him, and whirled to find a dakti trying to sneak up on him. He lunged forward, knocking it back and sinking his claws into its throat. As it dropped to the ground, he winced at the bolts of pain shooting through his wing and shoulder.

When he looked back into the air, Jade and Garnet had managed to get above Ranea, whose wing-flaps were getting slower and slower. Blood streaked her black scales. The red and blue queens took turns diving at her, never giving her a chance to rest, and she dodged and parried so fast she was a dark blur in Moon’s sight.

Suddenly, Janeas landed in front of him, blocking his view of the queen’s battle. “You,” he snarled, leaning forwards and flaring his wings, his expression twisted in fury. “You did this! You brought them here! You ambushed us!”

Moon just stared in incomprehension. His wing throbbed, the blood was pounding in his head, and he couldn’t make any sense of what Janeas was saying. The old ruler reached out towards him. Whether he planned to catch Moon as Ranea had ordered, or to just rip his throat out, Moon couldn’t tell.

And he never found out. Since suddenly, for no apparent reason, Janeas threw his head back and screamed. Moon took the opportunity to scramble away, glancing around for the cause of Janeas’s behavior.

There was a heavy thump as something large fell from the air, landing ten paces away. Moon started and jerked his gaze over to it. A black-scaled form lay motionless in a heap on the rocks.

Jade and Garnet landed in front of their kill in quick succession, and Jade turned immediately to where Janeas stood in front of Moon.

Janeas snapped out of it. For a moment his expression was panicked, but it quickly turned calculating, and then his eyes glassed over. Suddenly, he leapt into the air. Before Jade could pursue him, the rest of the Fell took flight as one, fleeing the battle, flying away over the tops of the trees after Janeas.

The sudden stillness was shocking.

Moon pushed himself painfully to his feet and stumbled over to the black body. He crouched down to look at her. Ranea’s blue eyes were open and unmoving, staring glassily in death. Moon felt…something. Not quite joy, not quite relief. But he certainly wasn’t sorry to see her dead.

Behind him, the warriors from Turquoise Lake and Indigo Cloud were rejoining their queens, breaking the temporary stillness to ask too many questions about what was going on and who were these other Raksura and why had the Fell left like that and so on. Moon saw that Jade had brought Balm, Chime, Song, and Vine. The warriors looked scratched up, but from the upbeat tenor of the discussion, it appeared no one had been killed or seriously injured. After a minute, the queens hushed them into silence.

Garnet turned to Jade. “I am Garnet, sister queen of Turquoise Lake.”

Jade frowned at her. “I’m Jade, sister queen of Indigo Cloud.”

Garnet blinked in recognition. “Ah. We were looking for you.”

Jade glanced toward Moon. “I would hope so.”

Now it was Garnet’s turn to frown, but suddenly she seemed to realize something and turned back to Jade urgently. “I thank you for your assistance just now, but I need to get back to warn my court. Your consort said that one was leading this flight,” she flicked a spine at Ranea’s body, “so hopefully killing her will have left them in disorder. I assume that’s why they retreated so quickly. But I can’t count on their confusion lasting forever, and once they regroup, I fear they will come to attack us in revenge.” She hesitated. “If your court is not nearby, you are welcome to come with us. Traveling will be safer with a larger group.”

Moon knew Garnet’s offer wasn’t as selfless as she had made it sound. It would be safer for the Turquoise Lake queen and her warriors to have Indigo Cloud backup. After all, it was Jade’s timely arrival that had just saved them all.

But Jade only glanced at her warriors, then nodded. “Yes, thank you for the offer, we’ll gladly take you up on it.” It seemed that she was willing to overlook Garnet’s self-serving phrasing in light of practical necessity. “Traveling together seems very wise right now. And we’re not quite sure where the rest of our court is at the moment.”

Garnet’s spines quivered in curiosity, but she was apparently in too much of a rush to ask for more details right then. She motioned her warriors into the air.

Moon almost attempted to fly after them out of sheer habit, but the bolt of pain in his right wing joint quickly stopped him. He had been so caught up in the moment, he had forgotten to think through what Indigo Cloud’s appearance meant to his own situation. Now that Jade was here, the Turquoise Lake Raksura had no reason to watch out for him or bring him along anymore. They would be assuming Jade would take over responsibility for him. But since Indigo Cloud didn’t actually want him either, that left him stuck. Even if the group would have let Moon follow them, he wouldn’t be able to keep up with his current injuries. Moon was on his own again.

Once the others left, he would be in exactly the situation he had been when he encountered Garnet for the first time, alone with a broken wing. But at least Ranea was dead, so somehow he supposed he had still come out ahead.

He glanced out over the hilltops. He would probably do best to start walking south. Moon folded his wings as best he could with the right joint so swollen and pushed to his feet again, unable to resist taking a last glance at the Indigo Cloud warriors and…wait, where was Jade?

He turned to find her standing a single pace from him, and flinched in surprise. Her spines were flat, and he couldn’t read her expression. He dropped his eyes, unable to meet her gaze, too afraid of what he might find if he kept looking. What did she even want with him? She said she was going with Garnet, so she should be getting a move on, not standing here to talk when there was nothing left between them.

Before he could think of anything to say, she stepped across the last space between them and wrapped her arms around him. He froze. What was she –

She picked him up and leapt into the air.

Chapter 7

Moon was so surprised he stiffened. What was Jade doing? The noise of the wind made it too hard to hear to be worth trying to talk. But even if discussion were possible, Moon wasn’t sure what he would say.

It was strange being so close to Jade, after spending so many weeks certain he would never see her again. Unlike how he felt near Garnet or even Tide though, he wasn’t uncomfortable, even though she was a queen. Maybe it was because he had grown used to her presence, after all the time they spent together while fetching the Fell poison. Or else maybe it was because he had come to trust her at some point, and even though he knew he had no reason to still feel that way, some of that trust still remained. Or maybe it was just because being around her reminded him of the time when he had believed he could stop wandering and stay at Indigo Cloud, the time when anything had seemed possible. Breathing in Jade’s familiar scent, he could almost imagine that the past few weeks hadn’t happened, that she would take him back with her to Indigo Cloud and everything would be the same as before. But of course, he knew that was impossible.

Jade’s grip on him was firm but not tight. He thought he could twist away if he wanted to. He didn’t, though, since all that would happen was he would fall to the ground. After recently escaping death so narrowly, he wasn’t sure he wanted to rush back to it again this soon. After a while, he noticed with surprise that Jade was even more careful than Tide had been about not bumping his injured wing joint. Unlike the injuries he had when he first encountered Garnet, these breaks shouldn’t look that bad, since there hadn’t been time for them to swell up or bruise. Besides, he hadn’t even shifted on them. That didn’t mean Moon wasn’t glad for Jade’s caution, since it still hurt quite a bit. He just wasn’t sure why she was bothering.

They flew on through the rest of the day and into the evening. Everyone had to be getting tired. Moon knew the Turquoise Lake warriors had been flying all morning already, and must be exhausted from the fight. Besides, their injuries were probably wearing on them, though the queens would have stopped to tend to them if there had been anything more serious than scrapes and bruises. The Indigo Cloud warriors were starting to flag as well.

Moon thought the obvious thing to do was to send one of the queens ahead to the colony to warn them since they were faster than the warriors, but that would mean one queen would have to trust their warriors to the other. Apparently, despite their agreement to travel together, they didn’t trust each other that much. Maybe it was just as well though. If Janeas or the remaining progenitor managed to pull the flight together in time to pursue them, having two queens would give them much better chances. Moon wondered whether any of the remaining Fell would actually bother, though. With so few of their flight left, he thought Janeas might prioritize their own safety over killing the Raksura. Janeas had never seemed particularly on-board with Ranea’s crossbreed plan anyways.

It was almost fully dark when Jade started circling down. At first, Moon couldn’t see why she was landing. It was only when they reached the ground that he realized Garnet’s group had already landed. Spiral was sitting on the grass in exhaustion, and the others didn’t look much better. Not flying himself, he hadn’t realized it, but the queens must have been setting a very fast pace.

The Indigo Cloud warriors landing behind Jade seemed in slightly better shape than the Turquoise Lake warriors, but not by much.

As soon as Jade landed, she set Moon on his feet and took a step back. He backed away another five paces in response and looked in the other direction. It seemed she really did feel disgusted just by looking at him. Why had she even bothered to carry him, then? Well, if she didn’t want to be near him that was fine, since he didn’t want to be near her either.

Jade turned to Garnet expectantly.

“I think my warriors cannot go any further tonight,” Garnet said, her spines rippling unhappily. “We were flying all morning already, and we’ve been setting a very fast pace. While it’s important for us to get back as soon as possible, = exhausting ourselves will only put us in more danger.”

Jade flicked a single spine. “We also need a break. We had already flown some distance before encountering you as well.” She paused, watching Garnet as if weighing her words. “If you’d like, I can take your warriors with me and follow you if you want to continue on to your colony tonight.”

Garnet looked anxious and very torn, looking between Hover, Spiral, Scatter, and Tide, before letting her eyes rest on Jade with a measuring gaze. Her tail lashed. “I…can’t leave my warriors here with you. If the Fell attack again, we’ll have better chances with two queens.” Moon thought it was more likely from her body language that she didn’t trust Jade with her warriors than that she was worried about the Fell.

Jade shrugged her spines. “I can’t fault that logic.” She let her attention stray from Garnet, looking around. “This would be a good place to camp for the night. With a strong wind like this masking scents, it will be better to keep watch from higher ground.”

They had landed on the top of a hill with only a few sparse trees that did little to block the view of the surrounding valleys. They wouldn’t be very hidden here, but they would have plenty of warning if something tried to sneak up on them. The sky was cloudless, and the light of the stars was enough to make out anything that tried to approach across the treetops.

“I agree,” said Garnet.

The warriors wanted to make a fire, but the queens stopped them, wisely in Moon’s opinion. He might believe the Fell would leave them alone, but a guess was hardly certainty, and they were already conspicuous enough at the top of this hill. The warriors had to make do with gathering brush and dried leaves to pile up as bedding. Moon caught a few unhappy mutters, but they all seemed too tired to really get into complaining.

After setting Moon down, Jade hadn’t tried to approach him again. At no time since they’d landed had Moon caught Jade looking at him, but whenever he looked away from her, he felt his skin prickle as if her eyes were on him.

Garnet seemed less tired than the others but more anxious. She paced in circles around the group, before leaping up into the air to circle above. Only when the warriors had finished settling in and everyone was clustered behind a makeshift windshield Chime had rigged out of some branches and large two-pace-wide oak leaves did she set back down on the ground again.

“Perhaps my group should continue on today after all,” she remarked, not looking at anyone in particular. Her warriors exchanged troubled looks.

“I understand your concern,” Jade said, not looking at Garnet, “but I doubt the flight we encountered will be ready to attack an entire colony so soon after taking such losses.”

Garnet half-flared her spines, more in exasperation than at Jade in particular. “I know that.”

“From what I’ve heard, your colony is large enough to defend against this flight.”

“From what _I’ve_ heard,” Garnet said, “your colony wasn’t much smaller than ours, and it…” she trailed off, seeming to realize broaching such a sensitive subject with a potentially hostile foreign queen while still a day’s flight away from her colony might not be the best idea.

“The flight was much larger then,” Jade said pointedly.

The warriors tended to their various scrapes and bruises, while some of the less-injured ones left briefly to hunt. The hunting group included warriors from both courts, though both queens stayed at the camp. Moon wished he could go as well, but since he couldn’t even fly, that was clearly out of the question. There wasn’t much he could do about his wing without a mentor or groundling healer, either.

As they waited for the hunting group to return, the warriors occasionally talked in low voices between themselves. The queens just stared watchfully out at the surrounding hills in tense silence.

Suddenly, Garnet turned to Jade and with her spines held flat. “While I can’t complain about your timing, I am wondering something.”

“Yes?” Jade raised an eyebrow.

“How did you manage to run into us? Sapphire, the reigning queen of my court, and myself, were under the impression that your court was traveling west some ways south of here. If you were heading toward the Reaches, we shouldn’t have been in your path for two more days at the very least. And when we contacted your reigning queen to ask about returning your consort,” her eyes flicked towards Moon for just a second, “she said you were away from the colony, so I don’t see how you could have known where to find us.”

Jade didn’t seem offended by the question, despite what Moon felt was an unjustifiably accusatory tone in which it was phrased. “To the best of my knowledge, you are correct that Pearl, our reigning queen, is with the rest of the colony south of here. I, however, was not with her, since I have been tracking the Fell.”

Moon glanced up in surprise, and saw that Garnet and the Turquoise Lake warriors seemed equally startled.

“Tracking them?” Garnet asked.

“Yes,” said Jade. Then her spines half-flared, and she looked directly at Garnet. “What _I_ don’t understand, is what you’re doing out here with my consort, when I recently received a message from Pearl that you lead her to believe you had found him and were waiting for us to come pick him up from your colony.”

Garnet’s spines flared in response. “When your reigning queen gave no indication of coming to pick him up, we took matters into our own hands. Why were you pursuing the Fell?”

“I would think that would be obvious.” Now Jade’s spines were fully flared.

Obvious? What was she talking about?

Suddenly, Garnet’s spines went entirely flat, and a cautious and somewhat apologetic expression came across her face. “Ah. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but the Arbora that were captured with your consort…didn’t make it.” Garnet looked away, her shoulders stiff as if bracing for Jade’s response.

_Heart, and Merit, and the other Arbora! The fledglings!_ Moon suddenly thought, looking to Jade in alarm. Had she not found them? Had they not made it?

But Jade just rippled her spines in confusion. “I’m not sure what you mean. All my people that weren’t killed in the initial attack were retrieved weeks ago. Except Moon, that is, until now.”

Garnet looked back at Jade and frowned. “That…is different from what I heard. Are you sure we’re talking about the same thing?”

Moon couldn’t bear it any longer. “Did you find Heart and the fledglings and the other Arbora?” he blurted out to Jade. “Are they okay? I saw them reach the forest, I thought you would find them, but I wasn’t sure…”

For the first time Jade turned to face him. “Yes, I found them in the forest south of the raided groundling city, they’re all fine.”

“I don’t understand what this means.” Garnet’s voice from the other side of the group was sharp, and she glared between them. “Your consort said the Arbora that were captured with him were eaten by the Fell.” Apparently her need to clarify the situation had won out against her inclination towards tact.

Jade looked at Moon in concern, and her spines rippled in a gesture he couldn’t decipher. “No,” she finally said to Garnet, “the Fell did not eat any of my people.”

“Then no one was captured?” Garnet asked, seeming thoroughly confused, and a bit unsure how offended she should be.

“That’s not it,” Jade said shaking her head, “the Fell took my consort and several Arbora, but not to eat. Moon helped the Arbora escape. They told me they thought he was going to come after them, but then they saw him fighting a kethel and did not know what happened after, only that he did not follow them.”

Moon wasn’t sure any of this was making sense to Garnet. Having all his lies exposed in front of her wasn’t how he had intended this situation to go, but in the end, he supposed it didn’t matter. Now that Jade was here, she would clear things up with the Turquoise Lake queen or not as she saw fit. There was no point in him continuing the deception anymore.

Something of what Jade said seemed to stick in Garnet’s mind though. “Why did the Fell capture them, if not to eat?” Despite the aggressive set of her spines, her tone was almost hesitant, as if she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer. Perhaps she already guessed, especially considering what she said next when Jade hesitated in answering. “And what was that Fell that we killed before? I’m certain she wasn’t a progenitor. I’ve never seen anything like her. She seemed almost like, well, a _queen_.” Her tail lashed.

Jade’s glance at Moon was unmistakable. “Perhaps we should speak in private.”

Garnet nodded sharply. Jade leapt into the air and Garnet followed her. They both made for a small cluster of trees a little ways down the hill.

Moon realized the warriors left behind were all staring at him. He turned abruptly and started down the other side of the hill, stopping to sit on a fallen log when the others were well out of earshot. For a few minutes, he just stared out over the dark valley. Even when footsteps approached, he didn’t turn, until someone sat down beside him.

He glanced over at Chime. Chime looked awkward and unsure. More so even than he normally did, what with being a mentor-turned-to-warrior.

“Moon,” he started, “are you…,” then paused, as if not sure how to finish.

Moon didn’t know what Chime was trying to ask, but he didn’t really care. He had more important worries. “Heart and Merit and the others? And the Sky Copper fledglings? Are they really alright?” That was what Moon most wanted to hear. He had heard what Jade had said, but some of that could have been posturing in front of Garnet.

“They are, they’re all fine,” Chime assured him, seeming relieved to have some way to start the conversation. “Jade found them just two days after they had escaped. The Arbora had built a blind to hide, but had left signs for Jade to find them. She tracked the Fell to the groundling city, but by that time…well, the Fell were gone.” Chime looked worried. “Are you…okay?”

Moon wasn’t sure how to answer that. He was what he was, what did it even mean to be okay? He supposed he was alive, and Ranea was dead, and that was really all he could ask of life at this point. “Sure,” he said.

“Really?”

Moon scowled. “Why was Jade chasing the Fell?” Partly he was asking to change the subject, but also because Moon really wanted to know. Though Jade might think her reasons were obvious, they weren’t to him.

Chime frowned. “What do you mean, why? Because of you, of course. And when the others told her about…well…she was really angry, you know.” Chime looked really anxious now.

Because of Moon? That didn’t make any sense. Unless…suddenly, Moon understood. She was worried about him and Ranea because only with him would Ranea be able to make more half-breeds. It was a reasonable concern. Her colony had suffered under the Fell influence for so many years. It stood to reason she would be dead set on wiping out the half-breeds, to make sure the Fell couldn’t follow them to the new colony and start the whole thing all over again.

Moon stared at the ground, scuffing the dirt with a toe-claw. He shivered. The wind was cold, even here on the more sheltered side of the hill. Even if his wing weren’t injured and he could have shifted down, he wasn’t sure he would want to lose his scales. Out here on the hilltop it felt so exposed.

“How is moving the colony going?” Moon asked.

“Oh, fine,” said Chime. “It was harder with only one wind-ship, but Pearl wanted to leave immediately, so we made do. I mean the Arbora made do. There was some grumbling, but I think everyone was anxious to get away after all that had happened. We all knew we needed a fresh start.”

A fresh start. If only it could be so easy. If only the past could be wiped clean. If only Moon could go back to before Ranea, before Jade, before Sarasail…before Tath killed Sorrow and his siblings. Hah. There was no such thing as a fresh start. For Moon, the past lived on with him forever, shadowing him like a curse.

“You’re shivering,” Chime said suddenly. “We should go back.”

“I’m fine,” Moon growled. He didn’t want to go back. Maybe he should just get up and start walking. It wasn’t like any of the others would stop him. The queens had probably worked out the truth between them by now. Would he even be welcome back in the group, clustered behind their wind-shield? Why was he even still traveling with them? Carrying him had to be tiring Jade at least a little. Moon would have thought it would have been more to her advantage to leave him behind. But maybe she still felt some sense of obligation to him for rescuing the Arbora. Or maybe she had just been afraid that if she left him at the site of the battle when his wing was injured the Fell would find him again, and pick up their half-breed scheme where they left off.

Moon jumped when something closed on his wrist, but it was just Chime’s hand. Chime pulled him to his feet, back towards the others. “Come on, it’s cold here, let’s go back,” he said encouragingly.

Moon sighed and followed him. Spending one more night with the others couldn’t hurt that much, could it? Somehow, where there were other Raksura, it just felt warmer, even without warming stones or a fire.

When Moon and Chime rejoined the group, the queens were back, sitting with their respective warriors. Balm had taken out some stones spelled for light that she had apparently had wrapped in her pack. They were starting to dim, but would last another day, Moon thought. Everyone was pretty quiet, even the Turquoise Lake warriors. Moon sat down on a rock.

Something about the mood was different now. He looked from one person to another, trying to discern what it was. Then he noticed that the Turquiose Lake warriors weren’t looking at him directly anymore, instead sneaking appalled glances out of the corners of their eyes when they thought he wasn’t looking. Had Garnet _told_ them all? Hadn’t Jade asked to speak in private for a reason? Or maybe she had just meant private from him. He had to remember that he was no longer one of them. He stood back up and went to lean against a tree a few paces away. It was more out of the warriors’ line of sight, but also not very protected by the wind-shield, and the cold air dragged at the heat of his scales.

He whirled at a soft footstep behind him. Chime was back, with a blanket. “Here,” said Chime.

“I don’t need it,” said Moon.

“But you…”

Suddenly, it was too much. Moon couldn’t bear to be here anymore, not knowing that everyone knew. Not imagining what he looked like in their eyes: like an intruder, unwanted even by his own queen. He jerked to his feet, and started walking down the hill.

Leaving now was for the best, he told himself. The Fell were still out there somewhere, and even without Ranea and Demus, Janeas might still come back for revenge. It was better for him to get as far out of the area as possible while the flight was still in turmoil. There was no sense in going back to Turquoise Lake with the rest of them, only to get kicked out there instead of here. And he had no need to say anything else to any of the Indigo Cloud Raksura. They had already told him the others were fine, which the only thing he had really wanted to know anyways, and he had never seen the point of goodbyes. If Indigo Cloud were destined to become nothing but a memory for him, he might as well let it start fading as soon as possible.

“Hey, where are you going?” Chime called after him.

He kept walking without answering.

Chime to catch up with him. “What are you doing?”

“Leaving.”

Chime looked at him aghast. “Leaving? Why?”

“Why not?”

“But your wing is injured, you can’t even fly! What if the Fell catch you?”

Moon hissed. “My wing was injured when I escaped the Fell the first time. If I made it then, I can make it now.”

Chime took a step back, but didn’t leave. “That doesn’t even make sense! I don’t understand why you’re doing this.”

“What is there to understand?” Moon crossed his arms, feeling his spines start to flare. “Now that Jade has explained things to Garnet, what’s the point of staying any longer?”

Chime hesitated, looking confused and worried.

Suddenly, a blue shape thumped down three paces in front of him. Moon jerked back.

Jade faced him, folding her wings. Her spines were down, but twitched occasionally, as if keeping them still were an effort.

“What do you want.” Moon heard the flatness in his voice, even though his feelings were anything but. Seeing Jade again just brought up too many emotions. Maybe when there were days and months of distance between them, he would be able to think clearly about her. But not right now.

“We need to talk.”

“No we don’t.”

Jade’s tail lashed. “We do. Now.”

Suddenly, Moon didn’t care. Whatever Jade wanted to say to him, she could say it, he could get it over with, and then he could go.

“Fine. What is it?”

“Not here.” Jade took a step forward, but when Moon stepped back in response, she turned around instead, and made for the tree line, glancing back to make sure Moon was following her.

When they were out of sight of the others, Jade stopped and turned so abruptly Moon almost walked into her, coming within arms reach. He quickly backed away, folding his arms across his chest and gripping his upper arms so tight he felt his claws digging painfully at his scales.

For a minute Jade just stood in silence.

Moon lashed his tail in annoyance. So she called him out here, delaying him, and then just stood there not saying anything? Maybe, the thought suddenly occurred to him, she had never meant to let him leave at all. After all, if he did, the Fell might find him again and make more cross-breeds. That would explain why she had bothered to carry him all this way. All his lies to Turquoise Lake to make them think he wasn’t a solitary were for nothing, since Jade intended to do herself what they would have done if they had known the truth. She was going to kill him. She hesitated only because she felt reluctant about it, perhaps because she knew him, or because she felt guilty, or because he was a consort.

He felt his shoulders stiffen, and his wing joint ached in response, but he was too anxious to unclench the muscles in his back. “What?” he finally growled, more loudly than he had intended.

Jade clenched her fist, and Moon braced himself for her attack.

“I’m…sorry.” She looked away and off to the side, unclenching her fist and relaxing her posture.

Moon blinked. Now he looked more closely, she didn’t look like she was preparing to attack. But what was she apologizing for, then? That she didn’t want him anymore?

Well, it wasn’t as if it were her fault that he hadn’t been able to protect her Arbora and himself from the Fell. That was on him and his own weakness. “I’m sorry too.”

Jade glanced up, startled. “That’s not…I just don’t know what to say.”

“Then why bother saying anything?” Moon said. Jade frowned, but he continued anyways. “What happened, happened, and passing blame or apologizing isn’t going to change anything.”

“I know.” Jade looked at the ground again. “You have a right to be angry with me.”

“I’m not angry with you,” Moon said, and suddenly realized it was true. He was sad to lose her, but at the same time, he understood. She put her court first, always. That was probably part of why he had come to love her. “I’m grateful. Even though I was a solitary, you gave me a chance, and not everyone would have done that. The time I spent at your court meant a lot to me. Just because it can’t work out between us now…doesn’t make what we had meaningless. I’m glad that I ran into you and your court, even if there’s not any place for me at Indigo Cloud anymore.”

Jade looked up suddenly. “But there is a place! You don’t have to leave just because…”

What was she even talking about? “Yeah, right. Back when I was only a solitary, you were still the only queen that would ever want me. And after…if now even you don’t want me, what chance do I have anywhere else? The warriors and Arbora barely tolerated me even before. No one wants me there now.”

“No! Why would you think that?” Jade sounded angry, but he wasn’t looking at her anymore. He didn’t want to meet her eyes. This conversation was becoming harder than he had thought, and the fog of apathy was starting to melt. He needed to finish this quickly.

“I’ll go somewhere far away, somewhere people don’t know me and there’s no Raksura. I’ll just…go.” He risked a glance up at her.

“You’re wrong! I do want you!” Jade hissed. She started to take a step toward him, but then just stopped as if something were holding her back.

“Then why won’t you get any closer to me?” Moon shot back. He lowered his eyes again. “I know you’re disgusted by me, after what happened with Ranea. I understand why you wouldn’t want to be around me. Some stains just don’t come off.” Moon’s crossed arms had turned into him gripping himself, as if holding the pieces of himself together. “Maybe you think you owe me for helping your Arbora, but if that’s why you’re doing this, then you can stop. Stone saved me before, so now we’re equal. There’s no reason to draw this out any longer.”

“No! It’s not like that!” Jade half-screamed in frustration.

Moon looked up at her sudden vehemence. “What are you –”

Suddenly, Jade moved, stopping only half a pace in front of him, so close he could reach out a claw and touch her. Her movement was so fast Moon felt the wind generated by the motion. He flinched reflexively.

“How can you say it’s me who doesn’t want you, when it’s you who won’t even look at me?” Jade’s voice was low and rough. “When you flinch away when I even get close to you? I’m sorry! I’m sorry that I couldn’t protect you from the Fell, that I’m not bigger and faster and more powerful. I’m sorry for what Ranea did to you. Even if I killed her a thousand times it wouldn’t be enough. I’ll wait, until you feel better about queens, until you get back to normal, as long as it takes. But you can’t leave now! You’re wing isn’t even healed. You’ll be killed! At least…” her voice trailed, “at least wait and think about it, okay?”

Moon shook his head. “I don’t believe you. You didn’t even want me before, when I helped you find the Fell poison. You didn’t even take me as a consort then. There’s no way you still want me now.”

“How can you not believe me?” Jade’s spines flared in frustration. “I chased the Fell all the way here for you! I know that’s not enough, not when it’s my fault you got caught, not when I couldn’t even rescue you correctly. But I’ll do anything to make it right!”

Moon shook his head disbelievingly. “But it’s not your fault. I was the one who was too weak.” It was hard to admit, but she had to know he had failed her, and he couldn’t just leave that unacknowledged. “You told me to stop the kethel, and I couldn’t.”

“What?” Jade looked shocked. “No, when did I ever say that?”

“Right before you attacked the other kethel! You said to not let them get away!”

“No! I told you not to attack them until I got there to back you up!”

For a moment they just stared at each other, and Moon realized that his breathing was fast, as if he had been running. Jade’s breathing was equally agitated.

Finally, Jade lowered her spines slowly, as if the motion took effort. “I know you can’t stand to even look at queens right now,” she said at last, “and I can understand why you would blame me for what happened. But you might change your mind in a few weeks or a few months. If after that you still don’t want to stay, I won’t stop you.”

Moon frowned. How could she think it was him who didn’t want to stay? Could what she was saying…actually be true? But if she had been planning to kill him, wouldn’t she have done it by now? Why would she tell him this…unless she really meant it? Slowly, Moon raised his gaze to meet her eyes.

Jade stretched out a hand slowly, as if to cup Moon’s face, but stopped at the last moment, her warm scales a hair’s-breadth from his cheek.

“If you mean it,” Moon said, his breath catching, “if you really mean it, if you’re not disgusted by me, then touch me.”

“I did touch you! I carried you here!” Jade’s spines rippled in irritation.

Moon shook his head. “No, now.”

Jade looked conflicted. “But you don’t want me to! You’ll just flinch away.”

“I don’t care!” Moon said, ducking his head, his arms still folded.

“But you’re afraid of queens now!”

“Not…you.”

For a moment there was silence. Moon thought maybe Jade had decided she didn’t believe him, or maybe everything she was saying had been a lie, though why it would matter to her what a feral solitary thought of her motives was beyond him.

Then suddenly her arms were around him, holding him to her chest, his face buried in her warm scales. Her wings tented above them, blocking the wind.

Even the pain in his wing-joint seemed to fade. He breathed in her familiar smell. He thought of Ranea, but only for a moment. Jade was so different than Ranea, in every way. Where Ranea was careless, callous, wanted to see him in pain, Jade wanted…Jade wanted him to be happy. No one, no one he had ever met had felt that way about him before. If Jade still wanted him… No, she _did_ still want him! With an effort of will, he made himself believe what she was saying.

He relaxed into her embrace, uncrossing his arms to wrap around the neck. She stroked his back gently.

He realized he was crying.

“It’s okay,” she said, holding him. “You’re safe now.”

For a while he cried in her arms.

Then he looked up at her.

“Will you come back with me?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.


End file.
